52 THE JOUBNAX OF HOIANV 



tilt; admirable translation of Theophrastus's Enquiry into Plants ; 

 for this we are indebted to the Canon, who suggested that Sir Arthur 

 should undertake it. 



Although Ellacomhe was not what is called a letter-writer, his 

 notes, usually very short and connected with his hobby, give a 

 pleasant idea of the man. One of the most interesting is that in 

 which he announces the discovery of the two long-lost volumes of 

 plint-drawings made for the Duchess of Beaufort at the beginning 

 of the eighteenth century and preserved at Badminton ; of these very 

 interesting collections a fuller description than that given by 

 Mr. Hill will be found in The Garden for August 28, 1920. There 

 are pleasant accounts, mostly from his note-books, of his trips abroad, 

 usually to Switzerland. The longest is that of Piora, above the 

 St. Grothard Pass — a place which Ellacombe was the first to bring into 

 notice ; this, with four other papers, including one on Roses, to 

 which he was devoted, is printed at the end of the volume. 



The book is attractively produced, and is embellished with 

 numerous portraits and other illustrations : but it has one serious 

 defect — not only is there no index, but the table of contents is of the 

 most meagre description. Such omissions in almost any book are 

 reprehensible enough, but in a volume such as this, abounding as 

 it does in references to plants, places, and persons of interest, it is 

 little short of criminal. 



British Plants: Their Biology and Ecology. By J. F. Bevts 

 and H. T. Jeffery. Second edition, revised and enlarged. 

 Methuen, 1920. Pp. xii, 346. Price 7s. Gd. 



Tins useful compendium of plant-biology has justified its 

 existence and arrived at a second edition, in which "a rather large 

 number of alterations and additions have been made in order to keep 

 pace with the onward march of the subject." It makes a very read- 

 able book for those who are anxious to know something more than 

 the names of the plants they find, and serves as a good introduction 

 to more serious botanical works. It is a multum in parro, every 

 biological aspect being touched upon : first, climate and its effect 

 upon vegetation, then the ecological factors, water and its influence — 

 xerophytes, water-plants, and tropophytes — light and heat, then soil 

 and soil-biology. The first part appears to be essentially a conden- 

 sation of Schimper's well-known work in which most of the important 

 plant relations are touched upon. Some misleading statements need 

 correction: e.g. (p. 27) transpiration signifies the evaporation of 

 water from the shoot whether controlled or uncontrolled, epidermal 

 or stoma tal. The recent work appearing in the Journal of Ecology 

 casting doubt on the significance of the hydathode has been over- 

 looked. What to the writer appears as a serious omission is the 

 neglect of Blackmail's theory of limiting factors, which has now been 

 applied to so many aspects of plant-biology, both in respect of water, 

 light, C0 2 , and heat, and also in Russell's book to soil-factors. The 

 dependence of the activities of the plant on limitation by any of 

 the numerous interactive factors should be made the starting-point 

 of any modern consideration of plant-biology, and it is hoped that the 



