172 



NATURE 



[October 7, 1920 



the great procession of green leaves and beautiful 

 flowers unwinds itself with a glory which no 

 familiarity can tarnish." To a representative list 

 in the order of their flowering, Sir Francis adds 

 the remark: "To a lover of plants, this common- 

 place list will, I hope, be what a score is to a 

 musician, and will recall to him some of the charm 

 of the orchestra of living beauty that springtime 

 awakens." 



The book begins with " Springtime " and ends 

 with "A Procession of Flowers," behind both 

 essays lying the problem of " the elements in the 

 struggle for life which fix the dates on which 

 plants habitually flower." "It looks, to put the 

 thing fancifully, as if a parliament of plants had 

 met and decided that some arrangement must be 

 made, since the world would be inconveniently full 

 if they all flowered at once ; or they may have 

 believed that there were not enough insects to 

 fertilise the whole flora, if all their services were 

 needed in one glorious month of crowded life. 

 Therefore it was ruled that the months should be 

 portioned among the aspirants, some choosing 

 May, others June or July. But it must have been 

 difficult to manage, and must have needed an 

 accurate knowledge of their own natural history.'' 

 Similar touches of wise humour are not rare. " It 

 has been said that Thoreau, the American recluse 

 and naturalist, knew the look of the countryside 

 so intimately that had he been miraculously trans- 

 ferred to an unknown time of year he would have 

 recognised the season ' within a day or two, from 

 the flowers at his feet.' If this is true, either 

 American plants are much more business-like than 

 ours (which is as it should be), or else Thoreau 

 did not test his opinions too severely, and this 

 seems even more probable." For, as a matter of 

 fact, the dates of flowering vary considerably with 

 the temperature and some other environmental 

 variables — a fact which gives subtle value to old- 

 fashioned phenological maxims : " When the sloe 

 tree is as white as a sheet. You must sow your 

 barley be it dry or wet " ; " When we hears the 

 wryneck, we very soon thinks about rining (bark- 

 ing) the oaks." "There is," Sir Francis says, 

 " something delightfully picturesque in the thought 

 of man thus helped and guided on some of his 

 most vital operations by the proceedings of the 

 world of plants and animals, to whom that hard 

 taskmaster. Natural Selection, has taught so 

 much. " 



Another delightful essay discusses the tradi- 

 tional names of English plants. "The fact that 

 language is handed on from one generation to the 

 next may remind us of heredity, and the way in 

 which words change is a case of variation. But 

 NO. 2658, VOL. lOfii 



we cannot understand what determines the extinci 

 tion of old words or the birth/of new ones. We 

 cannot, in fact, understand how the principle of 

 natural selection is applicable to language : yet 

 there must be a survival of the fittest in words, 

 as in living creatures." The author proceeds 

 to show how "the wonderful romance inherent ia 

 the great subject of evolution also illumines that 

 cycle of birth and death to which existing plant- 

 names are due." 



This is scarcely the place for an appreciation of 

 the essays on "Some Names of Characters j» 

 Fiction" or "Old Instruments of Music," or for 

 those on Sydney Smith and Charles Dickens, but 

 they are not less interesting than those on 

 Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker and Sir George 

 Bidden Airy. In connection with the last, we 

 looked for some remark on the astronomer's paper 

 on phyllotaxis, which seemed to us particularly 

 luminous many years ago, but we were disap- 

 pointed. Very delightful are the author's personal 

 recollections, especially of his early years. We 

 have not the courage to write in Nature of the 

 way in which Francis Darwin expressed in the 

 church at Down his innate fondness for musical 

 instruments ; but we are within safe natural 

 history lines in quoting the next two sentences : 

 "The only other diverting circumstance was the 

 occurrence of book-fish [Lepisma?] in the prayer- 

 books or among the baize cushions. I have not 

 seen one for fifty years, and I may be wrong in 

 believing that they were like minute sardines 

 running on invisible wheels." One more quotation 

 from a fascinating book, and we have done : " I 

 continued to work with my father at Down, and 

 in spite of the advantages I gained by seeing and 

 sharing in the work of German laboratories, I now 

 regret that so many months were spent away 

 from him." 



(2) Sir Herbert Maxwell has given us a sixth 

 volume of his "Memories of the Months," and it 

 will be as much appreciated as its predecessors. 

 It consists, for the most part, of evening recol- 

 lections of the natural history experiences of the 

 day. The breezes play with the pages. For w^hile 

 the author is often erudite he never wears his 

 learning but lightly. The year begins with winter 

 flowers and winter visitors, with the humble leek 

 which Nero is said to have loved, and with good- 

 going problems like the significance of the white 

 disc on the roe-deer's rump or the rabbit's cotton- 

 tail. The temperature rises, and we have daffodils 

 and birds' nests and the puzzles of the cuckoo and 

 the corncrake. In speaking of the frog-hopper, 

 the author slips in calling it a diminutive member 

 of the grasshopper family, and his story of the 



