866 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 938 



To illustrate its activity in its search for 

 food 



may be quoted the story of the ingenious traveler 

 who, in order to keep bed-bugs out of his bed, set 

 the legs of the bedstead in pans of water, where- 

 upon the bed-bugs climbed the walls, got out on 

 the ceiling over the bed and dropped down upon 

 the victim. In order to thwart his enemies the 

 traveler was obliged to raise his umbrella. 



As this is not marked as a joke, and is no 

 more so than the other statements, we may 

 expect to see it quoted as from good authority. 



Much important information regarding the 

 bed-bug has been published by the Bureau of 

 Entomology, and one is surprised that so 

 many interesting and valuable facts should 

 have escaped the attention of Dr. Hovcard and 

 Dr. Marlatt and their capable assistants. It 

 is regrettable that the information contained 

 in the article before us was not shared with 

 them before it was printed in a government 

 periodical, which the public is entitled to re- 

 gard as authoritative. Wm. A. Eiley 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 A Manual Flora of Egypt. By Dr. Eeno 

 MusCHLER, Assistant in the Royal Botanic 

 Gardens, Dahlem-Berlin ; Corresponding 

 Member of the " Institut Egyptien," and 

 others. With a preface by Professor Paul 

 AsCHEESON and Professor Geoeg Schwein- 

 FUETH. Berlin, R. Friedlander &. Sohn. 

 1912. Octavo, in two volumes. Pp. 12 + 

 1312. 



The author tells us that " the history of 

 botanical discovery in Egypt falls conveniently 

 into two periods." These chronologically are 

 (1) from 1Y61 to 1867, and (2) from 186Y to 

 the present. In the earlier period we have 

 Forskal's "Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica " (1775), 

 Delile's "Flore d'Egypt " (1813), Baker- 

 Webb's " Fragmenta Florulae Aethiopico- 

 Aegyptiacae" (1854), and in the later period, 

 Schweinfurth's " Beitraege zur Flora Aethi- 

 opiens " (1867), Ascherson and Schwein- 

 furth's "Illustration de la Flore d'Egypt" 

 (1887), Volkens's "Die Flora der Aegyptish- 

 Arabischen Wiiste auf Grundlage anatomisch- 

 physiologischer Forschungen " (1887), Sicken- 



berger's " Contributions a la Flore d'Egypt " 

 (1908). To this list, of course, should be 

 added Boissier's " Flora Orientalis " (1867- 

 1888), covering a vastly larger field than 

 Egypt. 



The present work is the outgrowth of the 

 labors of Ascherson and Schweinfurth, who 

 " for some time already had decided upon the 

 publication of a more adequate work dealing 

 entirely with the Egyptian flora, but, owing to 

 a great many more urgent tasks which took 

 up all our time, we had to put off the realiza- 

 tion of this plan from one year to another." 

 Accordingly the labor of preparing the present 

 work was entrusted to Dr. Muschler, who had 

 at his disposal " the most extensive and best 

 arranged collections ever made in Egypt." 



In a chapter on Phytogeography and Geol- 

 ogy in the appendix Egypt is divided into 

 five regions, as follows: (I.) the Mediter- 

 ranean Region, including the extreme north- 

 ern area; (II.) the Nile-Delta Region, in- 

 cluding the Delta proper at the north, and 

 the Nile valley to Aswan near the Nubian 

 frontier; (III.) the Oases of the Lybian Des- 

 ert; (IV.) the Desert Region, including the 

 Lybian, Isthmic, Northern and Southern 

 Arabian deserts; (V.) the Red Sea Region. 

 In the treatment of these regions many inter- 

 esting botanical facts are brought out in con- 

 nection with a discussion of their geological 

 and physiographical features. 



We may well quote several paragraphs in 

 regard to the Desert Region : 



The desert is characterized by a vegetation of 

 fairly uniform character in its main features. 

 The means whereby the existence of these desert 

 plants is preserved reside rather in the peculiari- 

 ties of their organization than in any specially 

 favoring influences of the environment. The most 

 prominent feature of this organization is the ca- 

 pacity which the vegetative organs have acquired 

 to resist factors so inimical to life as heat and 

 drought, factors whose common tendency is to 

 annihilate all living things. Though the minute 

 details of these multifarious protective arrange- 

 ments are not visible to the naked eye, they find 

 obvious expression in the external conformation 

 of the various organs of the plants. Thin-stemmed 



