70 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
gossip of that standard work, nor the same mass of detail as to 
individual trees, it is fully as — and, from its date o 
publication, naturally more comprehensive. 
he first part is an Introduction in twenty-seven chapters, 
occupying about a hundred pages, and dealing with such general 
questions as propagation, hybridising, transplanting, pruning, 
selection for street-planting, wet or dry places or the seaside, 
with lists of varieties valuable for habit, foliage, or fruit. It 
begins with an historical sketch admirably adapted to the purpose 
of the work, tracing in eleven pages the introduction of w 
plants into Britain from the time of the Romans and the wale 
of Turner _ npn and Henry’s book and ae collections of 
EK. H. Wilson and George Forrest. In this we have only to 
object to the: siacation of the final ‘‘e” in eae the date 1596 
instead of 1597 for his Herbal, sia the statement ae oa 
Tradescant “appears to have been a Dutchman.” Eve 
brief a sketch it is, perhaps, hardly wise to write of the ape 
Aiton as “the author of the Hortus Kewensis”’ without qualifica- 
tion: Mr. Bean would have done well to consult the third Sup- 
plement to this Journal for 1912, where the history of the work 
is given at length. Many of Wilson’s plants are as yet un- 
identified, but the author has included descriptions of nearly four 
hundred new Chinese es and shrubs introduced within the last 
fifteen see mainly 
The rest of the Entrodustion seems to us, so far as we are 
has many i neonveniences, to which are added those inseparable 
from a work of over — pages having to be in two volumes. It 
is impossible always to bear in mind the author’s conception of 
generic distinntenes wile by the bye, is by no means so lumping 
as those of Bentham and the Hookers. It is thus somewhat 
tiresome to find Fagus and Nothofagus in separate volumes, and, 
in some of the larger genera, to find allied species separated by 
the mere accident of an initial. At the same time, when the 
purpose of the book and the class of any for whom it is 
intended are duly considered, ve must admit that Mr. Bean is 
right in the course which he 
The authority, but not ts reference, for the name is given, 
followed by any one familiar synonym—more would, in such a 
work, have been mere pedantry—and very often by a reference to 
a good figure. e excellent, concise, and original descriptions 
are succeeded by a paragraph giving the native country, date 
