58 NATURAL SCIENCE [January 



Daisy-Starred Pasture, Under the Hawthorns, By the Eiver, Along the 

 Shingle, A Fragrant Hedgerow, A Connemara Bog, Where the Sam- 

 phire Grows, A Flowery Meadow, Among the Corn — a Study in 

 Weeds, In the Home of the Alpines, and a City Eubbish Heap. We 

 get an idea of the characteristic vegetation of each place, and the in- 

 dividual plants are made the pegs on which to hang facts of elemen- 

 tary botany : and, on the whole, the science is not by any means so 

 disjointed as might be imagined from this method of treatment. He 

 who has visited these or similar scenes with Mr Prae^er as his guide, 

 will have got knowledge enough to enable him easily to acquire more, 

 and thereby to satisfy a craving which we are quite sure he will feel. 

 Our notice would be incomplete without some reference to the 

 illustrations. Those in the text, the work of Miss Eosamund Praeger, 

 are useful, though by no means ambitious ; but the plates which are 

 reproductions of photographs, taken by Mr E. Welch, are very nice, 

 the frontispiece, " When Daises Pied," the group of Eeed-mace on the 

 Boyne (Plate I.), and a Cavan Meadow (Plate VI.), showing Purple 

 Loosestrife and Meadow-sweet, call for special mention, and so do his 

 other four. 



British Wild Flowers 



Familiar Wild Flowers. Figured and described by F. Edward Hulme, F.L.S. 

 Cheap Edition. 5 vols. 8vo, with 40 coloured plates in each. London : Cassell & 

 Co., 1897. Price, 3s. 6d. each volume. 



We are glad that Messrs Cassell have issued Mr Hulme's sketches 

 and chats on familiar wild flowers in such form as will bring them 

 within reach of many flower lovers. Our * wayside weeds ' are so 

 beautiful, and their study is such a healthy, restful recreation, that 

 any genuine effort to bring them nearer to us, and to help the would- 

 be student, is always welcome. But we rarely find a teacher who can 

 give us a pleasing and life-like picture as well as tell us, without being 

 prosy or technical, something worth knowing about our plants. Mr 

 Hulme is not a botanist ; much of what he says is irrelevant gossip, 

 and might well have been replaced by useful facts. But he does make 

 us feel what pretty and interesting objects are to be found in the coun- 

 try lanes, the fields, and the woods. He is not by any means systematic. 

 Beginning with the field convolvulus, we come next to the field rose, 

 then the meadow crane's bill, then silverweed, apple, borage, and so 

 on, higgledy-piggledy all through the five volumes. The only sop to 

 the scientific is a brief summary at the beginning of each volume, while 

 a short botanical diagnosis, such as we find in the " Student's Flora," 

 is given for each plant contained therein. It would have been quite 

 easy to arrange the two hundred odd species in some systematic order, 

 and such arrangement would have pleased everybody. The book 

 would then have been a useful companion to any of our smaller 

 British floras, and thereby a great help to the more serious student, 

 while even the most popular-minded person would, we think, prefer 

 to find his roses or his buttercups associated in the same volume. We 

 would also suggest that some of the plates are getting very worn ; 

 most of them, in fact, look best by candle light, but some, like that of 

 the periwinkle in the first volume, had better been left out altogether. 

 As regards the text accompanying the plates, we see from it at once 

 that the author has an eye for the general form and habit of the plant, 



