254 BULBOUS IRISES. 
to his proposal, on his own principle, is the difficulty in finding a 
market for spruce timber. Where larch, Douglas fir, pine, or even 
silver fir can be grown, spruce would probably be as neglected as 
as it now is in Sweden. 
r. Nisbet does not put forward his work as an elementary 
manual for students, but ‘for the use of landowners and of those 
conservatism will no doubt prevent them from accepting his con- 
clusions in too wholesale a manner. G. S. Bouxerr. 
Bulbous Irises. By Prof. Micuarr Foster, ‘Secretary R.8., &c. 
8vo, 85 pages, 58 woodcuts. Published by the Royal Horti- 
cultural Society, 117, Victoria Street, S.W. 5s. 
WE now know a great deal more about the bulbous Irises than 
we did when I monographed them in this J ournal more than 
twenty years ago. And we may say about Irises emphativally 
what holds good more or less for all petaloid monocotyledons, that 
; ; dried : 
and several of them are very ornamental. There were two 
splendid beds of Iris Xiphion in flower at Kew this summer near 
the Cactus-house, showing great variety of colour, and the thousand 
bulbs only cost eight shillings; and two similar beds of [ris wiphi- 
oides, which flowered a fortnight later and only cost double the 
price of the others, 
Professor Foster gives first a popular account of the different 
species and their cultural requirements, and afterwards a botanical 
synopsis of their distinctive characters and a clavis, He gives 
any woodcuts of the flowers, and in the synopsis 
bulb be wanted, we may perhaps say it is a specially-fed bud which 
Separates from the mother stock, in order to live an independent 
existence.” This of course comprehends far more than botanists 
erm. There i 
