December 19, 1912] 



NATURE 



433 



G. Claridge Druce. Pp. xxiii + io8. (Cam- 

 bridge : W. Heffer & Sons, Ltd., 191:;.) Price 

 6s. net. 

 {4) The Rock Garden. By Reginald Farrer. Pp. 

 xi+ 118 + 8 coloured plates. (London and Edin- 

 burgh : T. C. & E. C. Jack, n.d.) Price is. 6d. 

 net. (Present-Da}- Gardening.) 

 (5) Tulips. By Rev. Joseph Jacob. Pp. xi+ii6 

 + 8 coloured plates. (London and Edinburgh: 

 T. C. & E. C. Jack, n.d.) Price is. 6d. net. 

 (Present-Day Gardening.) 

 (I) ' I ^HE author of this work has written 

 X much and pleasantly upon ferns and 

 trees, but here he has ventured into a field with 

 which he is unfamiliar. The natural sciences, un- 

 fortunately, lend themselves too readih' to arrant 

 book-making when cacoethes scribendi gains the 

 upper hand, but that affliction is no excuse for 

 a bad book nowadays, when it is easy enough 

 to get a sufficient first-hand acquaintance with 

 the elements of botany to enable the compiler of 

 " popular " works to read with understanding some 

 of the many excellent botanical text-books pub- 

 lished in recent years and, where necessar}', 

 translate or paraphrase their diction into easier 

 language for the benefit of a wider audience. 



The object of the present work is apparently — ■ 

 by inference from the somewhat jumbled arrange- 

 ment of the chapters — to describe in simple style 

 the anatomy and physiology of "the two great 

 divisions of the vegetable kingdom called respec- 

 tively endogenous and exogenous plants," as the 

 author puts it. The first and longest chapter, 

 describing the venation of leaves, omits every- 

 thing that is really interesting — the relation be- 

 tween venation and the outline and composition 

 of simple and compound leaves, leaf mosaics, 

 etc. — though it is at any rate free from the 

 blunders to be found on almost every page in the 

 rest of the book. We are told that, in addition 

 to protoplasm, there are "in all, no less than 

 t\\ elve substances found within the cells of plants," 

 namely, "chlorophyll, dextrine, gum, lime, oil, 

 phosphorus, resin, salts, silica, starch, sugar, and 

 turpentine." This greatly simplifies the bio- 

 chemistry of plants. The structure of the 

 "exogenous" stem is also elucidated, for we 

 learn that the pith serves for the conduction of 

 water by capillarity, as also do the bast fibres: 

 the pith, moreover, produces the spiral vessels at 

 its periphery, these give rise to the woody zone 

 (showing "annular rings"), and this in turn pro- 

 duces the cambium, the functions of which are 

 shrouded in mystery and doubt. The author's 

 favourite words are "mystery" and "mysterious," 

 often used several times in a sentence and 

 hundreds of times in the whole book. 

 NO. 2251, VOL. 90] 



(2) The plates in the fourth volume of "Wild 

 Flowers as They Grow " fully maintain the high 

 s.landard of excellence shown in the preceding 

 volumes of the series ; the blackthorn, guelder- 

 rose, and white water-lily are exquisitely por- 

 trayed, and most of the other plants are extremely 

 good, though some of the colours are scarcely true 

 to nature. Some of the text-figures are, as in 

 previous volumes, too small and poorly executed to 

 be of much service in illustrating the floral mech- 

 anisms described in the text. The latter is perhaps 

 too largely occupied with folklore and quotations 

 from herbalists and poets ; but more attention is 

 paid to the biology of the plants dealt with than 

 is usually the case in books of this class, and the 

 author has taken care to refer to the available 

 modern text-books for details of pollination and 

 other biological adaptations. The author correctly 

 describes the bird's-nest orchid as a saprophyte — 

 it is too often stigmatised as parasitic in 

 " popular " books — but he might have proceeded 

 to explain the mycorhiza or symbiosis between 

 the plant and its root-inhabiting fungus, which 

 is not mentioned. Like its predecessors, this 

 volume, attractively got up, pleasantly written, 

 beautifully illustrated with coloured plates, and 

 remarkably cheap withal, will command a wide 

 circulation among the increasing circle of readers 

 interested in wild flowers. 



(3) iVlrs. Gregory's monograph of the British 

 violets, the outcome of her long-continued and 

 careful study of these protean and difficult forms, 

 illustrates the usual result of the intensive method 

 in systematic botany. In Hooker's " Student's 

 Flora," published in 1884, the British violets 

 occupy two pages, with descriptions of six species 

 and seven other forms (sub-species, varieties, 

 hybrids) ; Mrs. Gregory describes twelve species 

 and more than sixty varieties, forms, and hybrids. 

 Such studies as this, though adding to the troubles 

 of the average field botanist who is content with 

 the simple "lumping" method and finds the larger 

 genera of flowering plants difficult enough without 

 the "splitting" which modern systematists have 

 done with small genera like Viola or Fumaria, are 

 invaluable and prepare the way for further work 

 on variation, hybridisation, and ecology. 



(4, 5) These .two additional volumes in the ex- 

 cellent " Present-day Gardening " series are of 

 unusual interest and value. Mr. Farrer 's work on 

 alpine plants fuUj' deserves the eulogies paid by 

 Prof. Farmer in his preface to this volume on 

 "The Rock Garden," into which the author has 

 packed an amazing amount of invaluable informa- 

 tion and advice, such as will be more serviceable 

 to the rock gardener than a score of the innumer- 

 able tomes already published on this branch of 



