196 



REVIEWS AND CEITICISMS. 



EucalyjyUis. By Abbot Kinney. B. R. Baumgardt & Co., 

 Los Angeles, Calif. 1895. 304 pp., 30 plates. 



Mr. Kinney speaks of his book as a " Monograph on the 

 Eucalyptus," and has attempted to make it a summary of 

 scientific and commercial information on the genus. The 

 book proves, however, to be mainly a compilation, andj^ un- 

 fortunately^ one^ which could have been greatly improved by 

 reference to any good botanical and technological library. 



The botanical descriptions are mostly meagre, being nearly 

 all copied verbatim from Mueller's summary of the leading 

 characteristics, in Decade X of the Eucalyptographia, which 

 descriptions were never intended to be used, alone, for the 

 determination of species. SandAviched among these are one 

 or two copied from Bentham's Flora Australiensis. The only 

 indication, that they are not the author's own work, is a vague 

 sentence in the " Foreword " at the beginning of the book. 

 The short artificial keys under the four groups, and the plate 

 illustrating typical anther-forms in the groups, were pre- 

 pared by Prof. A. J. McClatchie, formerly connected with 

 Throop Polytechnic. The only original pieces of work in the 

 systematic portion, for which Mr. Kinney can claim credit, 

 are^ the sequence of species, which does not appear to offer 

 any advantage over that of Mueller, and the detection and 

 description of three so-called new specie^and six "varieties." 

 These last are called varieties of Encalypiiis amygdalina 

 var. rcgnans, and, fortunately for the synonymy of the genus, 

 have been numbered instead of named. Three of Bentham's 

 varieties of amygdaUna are enumerated, though without any 

 indication^ that Mr. Kinney is not their sponsor. These are 

 arranged in such a way, that they appear as varieties of 

 variety regudus, to which, however, no author's name is at- 

 tached, so that we have the following strange combinations: 

 "Eucalyptus amygdalina regnans var. radiaia,"" "E. a. r. 

 var. nitida'^ and "^. a. r. var. Hypericifoliar 



The naming of three "new species" of an Australian 

 genus, from young specimens grown in California, after 

 barely three years study of but few specimens and a limited 



