* 
NOTICES OF BOOKS, 185 
familiar. The practice of some recent writers who “speak o 
plants adopting this habit or that device as if they did i oe and 
intelligence ” is justly shiarisleiited by Mr. Taylor 
language”; and he not unreasonably thinks that, 1 ack” re 
believe in ‘the consciousness of plant-life or ho this language 
almost implies such a belief.” That ‘ vents hardly a virtue or a 
vice which has not its counterpart in the nied of the vegetable 
ingdom,” and that the “ principle of altruistic morality applies to 
it,” may be taken as examples of the somewhat startling axioms 
 Raycacaene by Mr. Taylor; but, apart from these and from the 
mewhat State a dings of his chapters, there is much in 
the book which will interest and instruct the general reader. An 
occasional slip ey be noted: such as that at p. 57, where the 
“ Air-plant” of cottage- etn (Saxifraga sarmentosa) is called 
Bryophyllum ler um; or (p. 125) the lettering a cut of Ovalis 
stricta as O. A 
Mr. Grant aie s ‘Flowers and their Pedigrees’ (Longman 
Green “ Co.) has hitherto remained unnoticed. It has all the 
merits of his previous works, not the least of which is a charming 
literary style; while it also possesses the same tone of liberal 
assumed a dingy purplish yellow hue, to suit the eyes of marsh- 
land insects”; that “waterside See do not seem to care for yellow, 
and therefore most waterside flowers are pinkish, purplish, or 
white”; and that ‘“ the marshy water-avens has exactly a same 
dusky purplish yellow tint as the marshy Comarum.” We cannot 
accept this description of the colour of Comarum, whic h, deeovae no 
one who is not colour-blind could consider the same as that of Geum 
Lysimachia vulgaris in summer, and Senecio aquaticus umn 
Seem to u picuous examples of yellow waterside flowers, not 
to mention such aquatics as Nuphar and Limnanthemum. Nor 
we accept Mr. Allen’s statement as to plant-distribution. It is not 
the case that Rubia peregrina “belongs only to a few headlands of 
Pembrokeshire, the Damnonian peninsula, and the south-west of 
Treland” ; ; it is merely an assumption that Centaurea Isnardi and 
Linari. ise Pelisseriana ‘have died out everywhere save in the Channel 
Islan and Cypripedium Calceolus is not strictly confined to 
. Bia ae station.” 
THE same por contributes a volume entitled ‘ Biographies of 
Working Men’ to the series entitled ‘‘ the Sou s Library,” issued 
by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Avowedly a 
Compilation, it is a most readable little volume: Thomas Edward 
is selected as the example of a working-man naturalist. 
Pror. Bentizy has issued ‘ The Students’ Guide to Systematic 
Botany’ (J. & A. Churchill) as a companion to the ‘ Gui 
Structural Botan ny,’ which we noticed last year (p. 818). Itisa 
handy little pocket-volume, which cannot fail to be of service to 
ose for whom it is intended. 
