THK AMERICAN BOTANIST 87 



the comprehension ot tlu- rux icwcr. The price is $1.50 a 

 copy. 



Dr. L. H. Bailey's long--expected ■'iManual <>f Cultivated 

 Plants" has at last appeared. Superficialh- it is like Gray's 

 "Manual" hut a closer exaniinatjon reveals main- features 

 that suggest the author's "Cyclopedia oi American Horti- 

 culture". It is very apparent that the author has worked with 

 a sincere desire to enahle gardeners, nurserymen and florists 

 to identify the plants with which they work. Technical 

 terms are reduced in numher, the English e(|uivalents heing 

 used when it possihle to make the meaning clear in this way. 

 There are clear and adecpiate keys to the families, genera, and 

 species and the author has adopted the British custom of di- 

 viding the technical plant names after the accented syllable as 

 Piccii-tra, I^'ra.v-iiuts, Mcdica-yo. A good many <>f the names 

 made from jjrojjcr nouns have been decapitalized, but the geo- 

 graphic names stiir retain their initial capitals. This being 

 a manual of cultivated plants, one searches in vain for even 

 the showy flowers of our woods and fields unless the}- hap- 

 [)en to have been taken into the garden, but in their places are 

 ■' host of exotics. With many of these we may i)e familiar 

 l)Ut find them listed here for die first time with their relatives 

 troni other parts of the earth. A pleasing feature of the spe- 

 cific descriptions is the matter of a more popular nature re- 

 lating to the time of blooming, habitat, habit, uses, derivation 

 of specific names, biographical notes, etc.. that, as in the older 

 Manuals, follow the ukm-c technical descriptions. Since so 

 many of our cultivated plants come from the tropics it is no 

 surprise to find the names of munerous families included 

 that are not found in our ordinar}- handbooks. .Among such 

 are Proteaceae. Pittosporaceae, Bombacaceae, Alyrtaceae and 

 Sterculiaceae. The families have changed their relative sizes, 

 also. There are only two species of Car ex listed but a wealth 



