Books and Current Literature. 49 



and yield of drugs, presenting also a list of cultivated plants 

 which yield substances of value in medicine. 



Part II gives full but concise descriptions of the crude and 

 powdered drugs, the former classified as to their morphological 

 origin, as those from seeds, roots, bark, flowers, leaves, etc. 

 The powders are classified first according to color, next according 

 to the presence or absence of calcium oxalate crystals, starch, 

 etc. It is furnished with an apparently usable key for the 

 identification of unknown powders. 



Part III treats of reagents and technique for the study of 

 drugs, and Part IV consists of a new departure in a rather 

 thorough crvstalographic treatment of plant constituents. 

 Illustrations are numerous throughout the book, and a thorough- 

 going index makes the work available as a source for that host 

 of odd bits of pharmacognostical information which the botanist 

 or physiologist sorely needs but which are usually omitted from 

 botanical texts. — Burton E. IvIVINGSTon. 



The Trees and Shrubs of Southern California. — 

 Abrams has brought together the results of his field and herbar- 

 ium studies on the trees and shrubs of the southernmost fourth 

 of California in the form of a systematic list, wuth complete de- 

 tails of the occurrence and distribution of each form, prefaced 

 bv a phytogeographical sketch which adds greatly to the value 

 of the work. * The area which has been covered is an extremely 

 diversified one, and in its flora the author notes the occurrence 

 of three elements: the Califumian, indigenous to the coastal 

 lowlands; the northern element, present in the mountains; and 

 the desert component, indigenous to the Great Basin or of Mexi- 

 can desert origin. These distinct floras, making up three quite 

 as distinct types of vegetation, are fitted, as well as can be done, 

 into the scheme of life zones proposed by Merriam. The Upper 

 Sonoran area is shown to include "two distinct sections," the 

 coastal slope and the desert slope. Of the coastal trees and 

 shrubs only ten per cent, occur on the desert slope, while no one 

 of the forms characterizing the desert slope occurs on the coastal 

 excepting Juniperus calif ornica, which perversely appears there 

 further down in the Lower Sonoran zone. The mesophilous 



♦Abrams. LeRoy. A Thytogeographio and Taxononiic Study of the Southern California 

 Trees and Shrubs. Bull. N. Y. Bot. Garden, Vol. 6, pp. 300-485, 10 pis. 1910. 



