56 THE SCOTTISH BOTANICAL REVIEW 
PiLant LIFE ON LAND, CONSIDERED IN SOME OF ITS BIOLOGICAL 
Aspects, by Professor F. O. Bower, F.R.S., Glasgow, is one of an 
excellent “shilling series” from the Cambridge Press, which aims at 
presenting the more recent aspects of botany in a semi-popular form. 
Much of the matter is familiar to botanical students, but the author’s 
way of utilising the well-known to illustrate what he wants to convey, 
makes the book pleasant as well as instructive. Algze, the Bracken 
Fern, fossil Cycads, fertilisation and pollination of flowers, and seed- 
dispersal are dealt with so as to suggest that plant-life begun in 
water becomes modified for a successful existence on land. While 
no great effort is made to shirk a certain amount of hard fact, the 
reader is carried along while the argument is developed, and in the 
first and last chapters the author appears in a lighter vein. It is 
refreshing to peruse a book of this type, so different from the back- 
boneless ‘‘ popular” books so common now. 
CLARE ISLAND SURVEY. Part X.: PHANEROGAMIA AND PTERIDO- 
PHYTA. By R. Lioyp PrRagGER, B.A. Dublin: Hodges, 
Figgis & Co., 1911. Price 4s. 
THE Clare Island Survey conducted by a number of Irish naturalists, 
with the aid of specialists, has now begun to issue results in the form 
of monographs, one of which, ‘‘ Phanerogamia and Pteridophyta,” by 
R. Lloyd Praeger, now lies before us. Clare Island is one of the larger 
of the numerous islands lying in the Atlantic west of Ireland, and 
it has been examined during the past three years from the points of 
view of botany, zoology, geology, and other branches. Botanically 
the island is mainly moorland, but the towering cliffs facing the 
Atlantic furnish stations for a number of plants, including several 
well-marked arctic-alpine species. The portions of Mr. Praeger’s 
monograph describing the flora and vegetations are of great interest ; 
they go far beyond merely descriptive lists, and there is a carefully 
worked-out comparison between Clare Island, other islands near it, 
and the adjoining parts of the mainland. The distribution of the 
chief types of vegetation is illustrated by a map. Of more general 
interest is the discussion of the origin of the flora, in which the part 
played by water, wind, birds, man, and geological factors are all so 
carefully considered that the memoir is really a work of reference on 
this—a subject of great importance in connection with similar problems 
on the Western Isles of Scotland. Is it too much to hope that in 
the not very distant future a similar survey will be instituted on some 
of the Scottish islands ? 
