NA BORE 
29 

THURSDAY, MARCH 11, tors. 


A TEXT-BOOK OF FORESTRY. 
By Prof. F. F. Moon and 
Prof. N.C. Brown. Pp. xvii+391. (New 
York: J. Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: 
Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1914.) Price 8s. 6d. 
net. 
Elements of Forestry. 
HE progress of forestry in the United States 
is remarkable. It is barely twenty years 
since the first forest reserve was set aside by the 
Government at Washington, which to-day con- 
trols with a trained staff of foresters about 
186,000,000 acres of national forests. Forestry 
is now a matter of great public interest, and is 
taught in universities, colleges, and schools, there 
being no fewer than twenty-three institutions giv- 
ing degrees in the subject. In addition to numerous 
bulletins and reports issued by the U.S. Bureau 
of Forestry, there now appear two professional 
journals, the Forest Quarterly and the Proceedings 
of the Society of American Foresters. Various 
text-books on special branches of forestry have 
been published, but no general handbook suitable 
to students in America has hitherto appeared. 
The “Elements of Forestry,” by Moon and 
Brown, is an attempt to supply this need, and it 
is very satisfactory as an elementary text-book. 
It will serve as a good introductory work for 
professional students of forestry, and covers about 
as much of the subject as is necessary for students 
in agriculture. The book is clearly printed and 
well-illustrated. All the usual divisions of the 
science and art of forestry are taken up in a 
series of simple and attractive chapters, at the 
end of each of which is a short and useful biblio- 
graphy. Of chapters i. to xiv., which are of 
universal application, those devoted to the utilisa- 
tion, technology, and preservation of wood are 
of special interest; and much praise must be given 
to the chapter on forest finance, in which the 
gist of this important matter is expounded in 
sixteen pages. The attention of landowners and 
practical foresters may be directed to the example 
on p. 265, which illustrates the most common 
problem in forestry finance in England, namely, 
the estimate of the cost of raising a crop of trees 
to any given number of years of age, and inci- 
dentally determining whether a plantation is a 
profitable investment or not. 
Chapters xv.—xxii., entitled ‘‘ Regional Studies,’ 
deal with the conditions of the forests of the 
United States, which are divided into seven 
regions. The description, silviculture, protection, 
and utilisation of the forests of each region are 
briefly but adequately dealt with. At the end of 
NO. 2367, VOL. 95] 
’ 

the book, in addition to a glossary, there is a 
collection of useful tables and_ statistics. The 
average rate of growth of the important species 
of trees in the various regions is given in Tables 
VII.-XI._ From this it appears that the most 
vigorous conifers in each region are as follows, 
the figures being for average trees 100 years old 
and grown under forest conditions. 

: J; é 
| Height Diameter in 

Region Species ieee socles at 44 
| eet up 
Pacific Coast...... | Douglas Fir 138 ey 
| Western Hemlock 110 52 
Rocky Mountains | Douglas Fir 86 21s 
| Pinus Murrayana WS} te? 
Northern ......... Pinus resinosa 95 | 176 
Pinus Stvobus 92 20°0 
SOUtherm-+...2... 62. Pinus Taeda Ill 24°5 

THE LANGUAGES OF SOUTHERN 
NIGERIA. 
Specimens of Languages from Southern Nigeria. 
By N. W. Thomas. Pp. 143. (London: 
Harrison and Sons, 1914.) Price 4s. net. 
R. NORTHCOTE THOMAS has given us 
an exceedingly interesting piece of work 
in African philology by publishing for a reason- 
able price what might be called a sketch of the 
languages of Southern Nigeria between the fron- 
| tier of the Bantu Cameroons on the east, and the 
Yoruba country on the west. The same ground 
was covered in 1888 by the writer of this review, 
but his work, which would be of interest in com- 
parison with, and supplementary to, that of Mr. 
Northcote Thomas, was only privately printed by 
the Foreign Office. Perhaps some day it may be 
disinterred from a confidential blue-book and 
produced with other linguistic studies. 
Mr. Thomas’s specimens (prominent nouns, 
numerals, pronouns, and such syntax as can be 
illustrated by a variety of sentences) include 
nearly the entire range of the Ibé dialects, the 
languages of the Calabar and Cross River dis- 
trict; the Ijo of the actual Niger mouths, Yoruba 
of the Lagos vicinity, S6b6 and Kukurtku of the 
Bini-Edo group, Ibibio of the region between 
the Calabar estuary and Op6bd, and a number of 
very interesting semi-Bantu languages on the 
verge of the Cameroons frontier. Mr. Thomas 
does not attempt much in the way of classifica- 
tion, but would seem to indicate that he finds 
a connection more or less close between the semi- 
Bantu Yala, which lies far to the north, of the 
upper Cross River, and the Edo or Bini group in 
the western part of Southern Nigeria. No evid- 
ence of very close affinity, or of affinity at all, is to 
¢c 
