388 BEVIEWS OF BOOKS. [Oct. 



He returned to the Cape of Good Hope to occupy a chair of botany- 

 combined with the office of Government Botanist in 1862. The 

 office was suppressed in 1866, a mistake since rectified by the 

 establishment of the Government Forestry Department, and Dr. 

 Brown returned to Europe to continue his mission of propagating 

 forest science by the press, having accumulated an herbarium of 400 

 species of Cape plants. Any reader of Dr. Brown's twelve treatises 

 on Forestry is aware that the wants of South Africa called them into 

 existence. Dr. Brown's enthusiastic admiration of the work in the 

 Escurial of the Engineers is well known to the readers of his 

 "Forestry" lecture. His exclamation on his recent visit appears to 

 have struck his native auditors, for it is of these constructions tliat 

 his English words are reproduced amongst a page of foreign type : 

 " All arc Spanish, all arc Spanish ! " 



ITALIAN FOBESTBY. 



Nuova Bevista Forcstalc pmUicata locr cura del Professori dell' 

 Istituto Forcstalc di Vallomhrosa dirctta dalV Ingcgnerc Comta. 

 F. Piccioli, Anno VIII., Dispensa v. con. 1 7. Tavole Settembre, 

 Ottobre. Forenzc Coi Tipi deW Arte dclla Stanvpa, Via Pan- 

 dolfini, 14, Pcdazzo, Aledici, 1885. 



This Journal of the Forest School of Vallombrosa, near Florence, 

 appears every two months under the editorship of Comm. F. Piccioli, 

 Along with the present number is given an atlas containing seventeen 

 plates in oblong quarto, which must be of peculiar interest to Indian 

 readers, or those requiring to transport timber down precipitous 

 mountain cliffs. A system of haulage ways fixed by iron stanchions 

 to almost perpendicular escarpments is well illustrated ; as well as 

 ingenious methods by which the timber loads are temporarily bound 

 together in their transit down from the mountains. At places where 

 this wooden tramway on rollers is intercepted by ravines, the loads 

 are lowered down by capstans into mountain streams, down which 

 they descend for a space, perhaps afterwards to be again transported 

 on a wooden tramway as at their start. Various ingenious mechanical 

 contrivances to facilitate this passage while preventing damage to tlie 

 cargo are illustrated by working drawings. The greatest novelty in 

 the atlas is perhaps the new method of signalling illustrated. No 

 fewer than thirty-two figures of foresters are given in distinct atti- 

 tudes ; this method is thus proposed to hold communication betwixt 

 men separated by the ravines or high precipices which are amongst 

 the most marked features of the Italian Alps. The system of 

 Brunetta appears to be a double overhead wire tramway, with 



