PLANT LIFE IN THE BRITISH ISLES 



79 



reveals to us the bases of scenery and landscape. So that here 

 the painter or the poet may join in the study of botany from a 

 really vital standpoint." It is to be regretted that the school- 

 mistress whose help in revising the proof-sheets Mr. Horwood 

 acknowledges did not add to her " many helpful suggestions " one 

 as to the need for clearness of expression and another as to the 

 principles of punctuation. 



Leaving the Introduction, in which is much that might be 

 criticized, we come to the descriptive portion. Mr. Horwood's 

 plan is to select for description "common types" of "the more 

 widely distributed and more familiar orders." We are unable to 

 discover on what principle his selection has been made :_ thus, 

 in Monocotyledons, Melanthacece, with one representative, is 

 included, while Liliacece, and AmaryllidacecB, which include the 

 wild Hyacinth and the Daffodil, are omitted ; in GluviacecB we 

 have some account of Gyperacece and a description of Eriophonm, 

 but the Grasses are entirely absent, and this from a work which 

 purports to be a " handbook of the common Natural Orders " 1 

 " The rarer representatives of the orders will be dealt with in a 

 forthcoming work" — a statement which seems to mean (see 

 p. 219) that the orders not included in this volume will appear 

 there : anyway, it is not easy to see how the Daffodil, the wild 

 Hyacinth, and the whole of the Grasses can be included under 

 this head. Nor is "the beginner" greatly helped by being told 

 that " reference can easily be made to more comprehensive works." 

 What he wants is one book, and there is no reason why a volume 

 of this size should not suffice his requirements. 



Turning to the " life-history " of the plants, which it is the 

 main object of the book to present, it is fair to say that Mr. Hor- 

 wood gives a good deal of useful information as to the habits_ of 

 the plants described, and details connected with fertihzation 

 receive more attention than is usual in popular books. In this 

 respect the author's hope may claim to have been to a certain 

 extent reaUzed, but his treatment leaves much to be desired. We 

 find no account of the seedling state of any species : nor, to take 

 a single example, is any reference made to so common and striking 

 an occurrence as the propagation of Cardamine pratensis by means 

 of its leaflets, or to the curious and almost equally frequent 

 prohferation of its flowers. Omissions of this kind are serious in 

 a book the object of which is "to bring the student iiito the field 

 [author's italics] to study " ; and we are bound to say that we do 

 not find in his descriptions much indication of original observation. 



The book suffers throughout from want of arrangement, which 

 leads to useless repetition. To take an example, the Holly is 

 described both under " the Holly group" (pp. 78-80) and at length 

 under its special heading (pp. 80-82) ; if the two descriptions had 

 been combined, and the matter rearranged, at least a page would 

 have been saved. Its chief defect, however, is in the prominence 

 of matter in no way relevant to " life-history," although painfully 

 familiar to readers of "popular" books. Still keeping to the 

 account of the Holly, we find the following : — 



