2S THE .KKliX.VL OF BOTANY 



otherwise excellent Unsere Fret I and Nadelholzer so much the 

 reverse of portable. 



Mr. Coltman-Rogers has essayed the formation of a key which, 



he says, he lias transcribed in pocket form. In the presenl volume 

 the tables occupy pp. 2(>:j-.3().") ; and, apart from the drawback that 

 they are in type far too small for the eyes of many people, they 

 may serve fairly well for the discrimination of the species and 

 varieties when the genus is known. There is, however, no key to the 

 genera, and the characters of the subgenera only appear at the heads 

 of the lists of species and not in subgeneric keys. The author has 

 apparently so great a dislike for the word "genus" that the Sub- 

 tribe Gallitrints appears with the " Subdivisions or Species "' < 'allitris 

 and Widdrimytonia and the Tribe Podocarj>e<e with the "Sections" 

 Pi :il 'carpi, Prumnopitys, Saxegothea, and Microcachrys. There is 

 a good glossary in which, as elsewhere in the book, the author shows 

 a considerable knowledge of Latin etymology ; but it is somewhat 

 unfortunate that the two entries " Nut. A seed enclosed within a 

 hard shell," and "Nux Banata. A nut enclosed in a pulpy covering, 

 as a Yew berry " should appear in close juxtaposition ; and the deli- 

 nit ion of "decussate" as "applied to leaves and branchlets arranged 

 in pairs" hardly covers the case of the leaves of Juniper us, to which 

 it is commonly applied. The "Identifying Tables " are preceded by 

 -02 pages of gossip more or less concerned with confers. Two pages 

 are devoted to violins and spruce-trees, two to Conitim maculatum as 

 a method of execution in ancient Greece, and a good deal of space to 

 the short-comings of public school education, the relative knowledge 

 •of country life possessed by Virgil and Pliny, etc., etc. In a volume 

 intended for the pocket one may resent the mere waste of space 

 involved in such a discussion of the appropriateness or inappropriate- 

 ness of a technical term as that which occupies most of p. 103, 01 

 even a shorter circumlocution which can say of the stem of a 

 Sequoia : — 



" In shape it resembles, with its tapering stem, the familiar form 

 of that Dairy Company's milk-can that we all know so well and hear 

 so often, to the disquietude of our system and the disturbance of our 

 nerves, rolled and jangled along the platforms of our island home 

 railway stations." 



A page or two might well have been saved by the omission of the 

 entirely superfluous "the" before the names of species, as if they 

 were Irish chieftains of exalted genealogy. When, however, the 

 author writes of Abies sachalinensis that in Hokkaido " it is the 

 sole representative of its species," he does not mean what his words 

 strictly imply, that there is but one example on the island, as seems 

 to be the case with Santalwm femandezianwm on Juan Fernandez ; 

 but simply does not know the difference between a species and a 

 genus. It is clear that Mr. Coltman-Bogers loves his trees, and he 

 may himself know them well ; but, while it is painful to find a tree- 

 lover writing of Evelyn's " Sylvia" it is a more serious defect when 

 obscurity of style makes it difficult to gather the meaning of sen- 

 tences intended to inform. The following sentence on the name 

 ■of Picea Smithiana is a fair example : — 



