CURRENT LITERATURE 



BOOK REVIEWS 



The vegetation of Chile 



The eighth volume of Engler and Drude's Vegetation der Erie is a mono- 

 graph on the vegetation of Chile by Dr. Karl Reiche 1 of the National Museum 

 at Santiago. This is the first volume of the series to deal with American vegeta- 

 tion. Reiche's long first-hand acquaintance with the Chilean flora makes this 

 contribution a masterpiece, and all the more since fourteen years of effort have 

 been spent with this volume in mind. Chile is to botanists the best-known part 

 of South America, partly by reason of its peculiar accessibility, and partly by 

 reason of the large number of foreign botanists who have made Chile their home, 

 for a time at least. Among those who have contributed largely in recent years, and 

 thus made Reiche's work more readily possible, are Philippi, Johow, Neger, 

 and Dus£n. Of particular importance is the work of R. A. Philippi, who was 

 active for over half a century, and who died in 1904 at the age of 96. A short 

 account of botanical investigation in Chile forms the introduction to the work, 

 and there is given a bibliography of Chilean botany comprising 550 titles, of which 

 R. A. Philippi and his son contributed nearly one hundred. 



No country in the world presents distribution problems of greater interest than 

 those of Chile, as may be suspected by reason of climatological variation. The 

 vegetation ranges from that of the desert of Atacama in the north, perhaps the 

 driest of all deserts, to the rain forests of the south, where there is a rainfall of 

 25o cm per annum. In northern or tropical Chile (i8°-30°) there is the region of 

 esert where there are no marked seasons, and where agriculture is confined to the 

 oases and river banks. In central or subtropical Chile (3o°-38°) there are sharply 

 marked dry and wet seasons, and the vegetation varies from steppes northward to 

 sclerophyll forests southward. In southern or temperate Chile (38°-55°) there 

 sharp distinction between the very rainy coastal district, where seasonal 

 <k an p are relatively slight, and the interior, where the climate is dry and where 

 k e winters are cold and the summers hot. This rainy coastal strip is characterized 

 ( VlTJf* 66118 (temperate rain forest), while there is a strip of deciduous forest 

 VPro ably the only such forest of consequence in the southern hemisphere) in the 



forest^ Peri ° dic climate t0 th e east. It will be noticed that this distribution of 



r.fk S f PaitS from that 8 iven b y Schimper in that the deciduous forest lies east 

 ra *er than south of the 



is a 



evergreens. 



Drude, 



nverbreitung 

 emann. ion 



VIII. Reiche 



907. M30 



73 



