i894- 



SOME NEW BOOKS. 221 



a Composite, but he would be a bold man who would accept a specific 

 determination made on such material and in such a very critical genus 

 as Hieracium. Another thing, not unlike a sea- weed, " the identification 

 of Avhich appears to be hopeless," Dr. i3onavia suggests as not 

 impossibly intended for the Baobab, a tree found in the Soudan and 

 S.E. Africa, and introduced, perhaps, along with ivory and many 

 other products, which must have come from the Soudan via the Red 

 Sea. 



Out of the study of the Flora arises the question of the origin of 

 the so-called Sacred Trees, of which four or five different kinds are 

 traceable on the monuments, viz., the date, vine, pomegranate, fir, 

 and perhaps the oak. This leads us on to the cone-shaped object, 

 "held in the hand of winged genii, and pointed either at a sacred tree 

 or at the king's person, or at the entrance of a temple, palace, or 

 town." In the other hand the genius invariably holds a bucket of 

 some sort, and in the bucket the worthy doctor finds the key to the 

 situation. After rejecting his own notion of the citron, and also Dr. 

 Tylor's theory, that the cone is the male inflorescence of the date-palm, 

 of which a further supply was contained in the bucket or basket, and 

 that the pointing indicates fertilisation of the sacred tree, the author 

 suggests an explanation to which he does "not see sufficient grounds 

 for not adhering." It is that the bucket contains holy water and the 

 cone-object represents a cedav-cone, used as a sprinkler. This will 

 explain the pointing at the king's back hair and other objects besides 

 the date-palm. As we are barely half through the book, we cannot 

 stay to evolve a more satisfactory solution. In the next section the 

 Lotus as a decorative object is discussed with a protest against 

 viewing all ancient ornamentation through "lotus-spectacles." The 

 "Anthemion," it is argued, originated in the sacred date-tree of the 

 Assyrians. Apropos of "the Evil Eye" it is suggested that the Prince 

 of Wales's feathers may have originated from a pair of horns (a pro- 

 tection against the aforesaid eye) and three date-palm leaves. 



The last two sections of this very readable and well-produced 

 work are entitled " The Trident " and " Some Notes on Cylinders." 



The Genus Masdevallia. Issued by the Marquess of Lothian, plates and 

 descriptions by Miss Florence H. Woolvvard. Folio. Part v., containing ten 

 species and varieties. London: Porter, 1893. Price ;^i los. 



We congratulate the authors of this admirable monograph on the 

 completion of the fifth part of their undertaking, which must bring 

 them about half-way through, as fifty species and varieties have now 

 been figured and described. We are inclined to think the present 

 the most interesting of any of the parts which has yet appeared. It 

 certainly is so from a scientific point of view, as it contains a complete 

 history of Masdevallia nniflora, the first Masdevallia made known to 

 science, discovered more than a hundred years ago in the Peruvian 

 Andes by the Spanish botanists Ruiz and Pavon, and named in 

 honour of their fellow-countryman, Dr. Josepho Masdevall, a physician 

 and a patron of botany. It was found only in one locality, of which a 

 description is given by Ruiz in his manuscript diary preserved in 

 the Botanical Department of the British Museum. Huassa-huassi, 

 as it is called, was then a small village of about forty inhabitants, 

 situated in the depths of a steep narrow ravine, on the banks of a 

 mountain torrent of the same name ; the slopes around were covered 

 with brilliant flowering plants, among which orchids abounded, their 



