BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE 



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A Yosemite Flora. — -The authors of this flora 1 claim in their preface, 

 with truth, that "the Yosemite National Park is perhaps the most 

 delightful region in all the world for the study of plant life." In support 

 of this assertion they set forth the remarkable diversity of ecological 

 conditions there to be found in a comparatively limited area, affording 

 congenial environments to an extensive and varied flora. The area 

 of the Park is 1124 square miles, and upon it grow r at least 1200 species 

 and varieties of ferns and flowering plants, almost exactly one-quarter 

 of the number treated in the last edition of Gray's Manual for the whole 

 northwestern and central States of the Union and adjacent Canada. 



The scenic attractions of the wonderful Yosemite Valley draw to it 

 a continually increasing concourse of summer visitors, to most of whom 

 the great trees, the beautiful or curious flowers of the shrubs and herbs 

 are all new and strange. It cannot fail that many will desire an intro- 

 duction to these interesting neighbors, to learn their names, and some- 

 thing of their family relationships, and will welcome a book which shall 

 afford them this information. Always provided that they are able 

 to understand the book; for not many will have the botanical knowledge 

 needed for a technical manual, would, indeed, be repelled by it. 



It is this class of readers that the authors have had primarily in mind 

 in preparing their book, successfully striving to make it one that shall 

 attract the amateur and the lover of flowers, and at the same time not 

 repel the botanist. The descriptions of genera and species are made 

 as simple as possible, but they are accurate and will correctly guide 

 the reader to the identification of his plant. The keys to the tribes 

 of the Compositae, and to such difficult genera as those of the Cruciferae 

 and the Umbelliferae, which if founded on technical characters usually 

 employed could not be used by untrained readers, are here models of 

 how rough places may be made easy. They are, it is true, entirely 

 artificial, and give prominence to characters on w r hich the systematist 



1 Hall, Harvey Monroe and Hall, Carlotta Case, A Yosemite Flora, a descrip- 

 tive account of the ferns and flowering plants of the Yosemite National Park. 

 Pp. 282, pis. 11, figs, in text 70. San Francisco: Paul Elder and Company, 1912. 



($2.00.) 



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