134 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
characterised the “General” parts of the preceding volumes. 
But the “Special” part is not so satisfactory. In fact, in all 
three volumes there is in these “Special” parts regrettable 
confusion in the descriptions of some of the more important 
species, and unfortunate omissions of some of the others; and 
should it be the intention to carry Professor Ward’s work to a 
conclusion (and it is hoped that this will be done), it may not 
be out of place here to draw attention to a few of them. 
The greatest confusion, perhaps, occurs in the genus U/mus 
(admittedly a very difficult one). In the case of the Scotch and 
English elms the synonymy seems to have got inextricably 
mixed up, and to the latter species an erroneous description has 
been applied. In the first volume the author states an un- 
doubted truth when he says that “there is still considerable 
difficulty about the various sub-species or varieties of elms”; but 
he must have been under some misapprehension as to the 
distinctions between the Scotch and English species when he 
described the twigs and buds of the former as being “stiffly 
hairy,” and those of the latter as being “ practically smooth” 
(vol. i. p. 184). In the typical Ulmus campestris, the twigs, 
though thinner, are quite as hairy as they are in the Scotch 
species (U. montana), Possibly the author has confounded two 
closely allied species, U. campestris and U. glabra, and the 
description of the former may have been drawn up from material 
derived from the latter. In such genera as Zilia, Populus, Picea, 
Pinus, and several others, too, matters are not quite satisfactory 
in this respect. Some of the more important species, from a 
forestry point of view, which have been omitted from the work 
are the white alder (A/nus zncana), the Menzies spruce (Picea 
sitchensis), the Japanese larch (Larix Jeptolepis), the Corsican 
(as distinct from the Austrian) pine (?”us Laricio), the Lawson 
Cypress (Cupressus Lawsoniana), and the Prince Albert fir 
(Zsuga Mertensiana), while several of minor importance might be 
mentioned. Again, many species, such as some of the rarer Alpine 
willows (which in this country occur at altitudes considerably 
above the limit of forest growth), the vine, the Virginian creeper, 
Ficus carica, and many others, which seldom or never occur in 
woodlands, might have been omitted from the work. 
But while the opportunity is here taken to point out these 
blemishes in what is undoubtedly the most important work of 
the kind in the English language, it is done in no carping spirit. 
