BABINGTON's MAXUAL of BRITISH BOTANY 243 



the realisation of such a liope ; but there are others, including Mr. 

 Wilmott liimself, who might combine in producing a thoroughly 

 satisfactory handbook to British botany. Even though the hand 

 which has, since the death of its author, controlled the destinies of 

 the Manual is now removed, it would be futile again to attempt to 

 patch up a work which in the past has been of incalculable service to 

 British botanists. 



TJie Call of the Wildfloiver. By HE^iRT S. Salt. Cr. 8vo, cloth, 

 pp. 192, price Qs. net. Allen and Unwin. 



In this pleasant little book, Mr. Salt turns his attention from the 

 animals, with whose wrongs he is a well-known sympathiser, to 

 flowers, with which "it is as friends, not garden captives or herbarium 

 specimens, that the flower-lover desires to be acquainted." To know 

 them he must see them in their native haunts, and this Mr. Salt has 

 done, " starting from the coast of Sussex " — a county which figures 

 largely in his book — " and ascending to the high mountains of Wales 

 and the north-west." He laments that " books mostly fail, not only 

 to portray the life of the plant, but even to give an intelligible 

 account of its habitat and appearance " ; formulates the usual 

 objection, first we think expressed by Thomas Hood, who said that if 

 we really loved flowers we should'nt give them such hard names ; 

 and, in a chapter headed '* Botanesque," criticizes " botanical 

 phraseology." 



The book however is a very favourable specimen of its kind; 

 Mr. Salt has a genuine enthusiasm for wild flowers, and has observed 

 them in many and various localities, and his description of these and 

 of the plants themselves is accurate as well as sympathetic. There is 

 an amusing chapter on " the lying legend " " Trespassers will be 

 prosecuted" — " trespassers will 7«o^ be prosecuted, for the sufticient 

 reason that in English law trespassing is not an offence provided they 

 do no sort of damage and that if their presence is objected to they 

 j^olitely retire " : he sometimes descends to puns — " orchistra " for a 

 chalkpit abounding in orchids and " Anne-Prattle," which is rather 

 cruel, for Miss Pratt did good work in her way. He is properly 

 severe on vandalism such as that displayed by the * gentleman,' who 

 came with two gardeners in a motor and departed laden with 

 " Gentiana verna for his private rockery .... such a botanist, if 

 botanist he can be called, deserves to be himself transplanted or trans- 

 ported — to Botany Bay." The book is well printed ; but one wonders 

 why the names of genera, with rare exceptions, begin with a small 

 letter. 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, etc. 



We regret to announce the death of the Kev. John Vaughan, 

 who since 1909 has been a Canon Kesidentiary of Winchester 

 Cathedral ; he preached in the Cathedral on the morning of Sunday 



