Januaet 22, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



149 



Tests, Properties and Uses" of thirty-four 

 Philippine woods, and a year later, the edition 

 being exhausted, a second, revised edition was 

 brought out. In its present form it includes 

 a popular discussion of the qualities of woods 

 and the meaning of timber tests, methods of 

 testing and results of tests, structural quali- 

 ties, appearance and uses. In the last-named 

 section, in addition to common names the 

 scientific names as far as they can be deter- 

 mined are given. An interesting comparison 

 of the tests of Philippine and American woods 

 shows that the former rank very high. 



L. A. Dode's " Notes Dendrologiques " in 

 the Bulletin de la Societe Dondrologique de 

 France (1907) includes notes on AilantiiSj 

 Oatalpa, Sorbus, Clerodendron and Platanus, 

 in most of which genera the author of course 

 finds " new species " 1 



ANOTHER BOOK ON NORTH AMERICAN TREES 



George B. Sud worth, dendrologist in the 

 Forest Service, has made an important con- 

 tribution to our knowledge of the trees of the 

 western part of North America by the publica- 

 tion (October 1, 1908) of a thick pamphlet 

 of 441 pages under the title " Porest Trees of 

 the Pacific Slope." It is the first part of a 

 work intended to deal with all the native 

 forest trees of North America north of the 

 Mexican boundary. This volume contains an 

 account of the trees known to occur in Alaska, 

 British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and 

 California. Part II. will be devoted to the 

 Eocky Mountain trees, part III. to the trees 

 of the southern states, and part IV. to the 

 trees of the northern states. The work when 

 completed will therefore be one of the most 

 important of those yet published by the Forest 

 Service, and must prove of great value to stu- 

 dents of forestry and especially of dendrology, 

 while as a matter of course it will be indis- 

 pensable to the systematic botanist. It may 

 be asked why should the United States Forest 

 Service incur the labor and expense of pub- 

 lishing a comprehensive work on the North 

 American forest trees when we already have 

 Sargent's " Silva " in fourteen great quarto 

 volumes ; Sargent's " Manual of the Forest 



Trees of North America"; and Britten's 

 " North American Trees," but it does not re- 

 quire a long perusal of the book before us to 

 convince one that it contains much that is not 

 to be found in other books, and that it can 

 easily justify its existence. 



In the first place it is written from the 

 dendrologist's point of view. It is rather a 

 forester's book than one for the botanist, and 

 so contains some things that are not to be 

 fqund in other books on trees. Thus one 

 finds under each species a paragraph relating 

 to the longevity of the trees, another as to 

 their particular habitat, still another in regard 

 to the climatic conditions under which they 

 grow, one on tolerance (of especial value to 

 the practical forester) and one on their repro- 

 duction (also of very high value to the 

 forester). The descriptions are non-technical 

 and are accompanied by good life-size figures 

 of characteristic parts, as leaves, cones, fruits, 

 seeds and less commonly the flowers. In only 

 a few instances was it necessary to reduce the 

 figures below their natural size. 



In the second place it is desirable that there 

 shall be some authoritative silva for the use 

 of the men who go into the United States 

 Forest Service. In this book care has been 

 taken in regard to the selection of English 

 names for the species, and in like manner 

 where there has been a question as to the 

 proper scientific name one is here designated 

 for use by the official dendrologist. In re- 

 gard to this latter point it seems to the writer 

 of this notice that on the whole a conservative 

 course has been taken. While many trees ap- 

 pear here under unfamiliar names, there seems 

 to be a good reason for every change made. 

 There is an entire absence also of the species- 

 making mania, and the reader soon gets the 

 impression that the author is more interested 

 in giving such a clear idea of the species that 

 they may be recognized in the forests than in 

 making out that certain observed variations 

 are the sure indications of new species. 



The definition of a tree followed by the 

 author includes "woody plants having one 

 well-defined stem and a more or less definitely 

 formed crown, and attaining somewhere in 



