348 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



following sentence : " To have made a thoroughly scientific work 

 . of it was deemed undesirable, for it would have meant so much 

 pulling to pieces and putting together again, that the charming 

 classic, the simple book in which for so many years keen un- 

 scientific amateurs have been wont to burrow, and find quite suc- 

 cessfully the names of the plants which they collected, would no 

 longer have remained/' 



The fact that Mr. Elliott has not even troubled to print the 



name of his author correctly — he speaks of the book as " John's 

 whenever he has occasion to refer to the author — is typical of 

 the extraordinary carelessness which ramps through the book. 

 The specific names under the figures almost always have a capital, 

 while in the text, in cases where they ought to have one, it is not 

 employed. There is no reference in the text to the plates, and 

 the names do not correspond. Misprints abound — e.g. " Chicfcory " 

 (plate 54) ; " Cryptipedium " (index); -Marsh Plum-thistle" (p. 162); 

 • ■ < saxitalis ' ' (p. 43); " Achillia " (p. 176) ; ' ' ochrolucea ' ' (p. 228). 

 Under the page-heading " Glumaceae " we have Aracece and 

 other orders which are not glumaceous ; the figure of Draba 

 verna (p. 23) is upside-down ! Many of the figures in the text 

 were wisely discarded as far back as 1871 by the S.P.C.K. as 

 inadequate— the Society would do well, by the way, in future 

 editions, to carry the process further — and the lettering of these is 

 not always accurate — e. g. the two Chrysanthemums are included 

 under one name on p. 174. 



We have not a copy by us of an early edition, but the claim 

 on the title-page that the volume before us has been " revised 

 throughout " is sufficiently met by the statement in the preface 

 that " most of the additions and alterations are of an unobtrusive 

 nature/ 1 The additions do not include such recent accessions to 

 our flora as Stocky* alpina; we detect, however, Mr. Elliott's 



hand in the remark on Ononis : " Several more or less distinct 

 forms occur which have been variously classed as species or 

 varieties, but they scarcely come within the scope of the present 

 work." The incompleteness which marred all the editions pre- 

 vious to Mr. Boulger's is observed here ; Cyperacece and Graminece 

 are entirely omitted. 



A great feature is made of the coloured plates, which, as Mr. 

 Elliott says, " speak for themselves." The few which are devoted 

 to one plant are sometimes (but not always) quite good ; the rest, 

 on which two or three scraps of different plants are thrown down, 

 are for the most part almost ludicrously feeble, although they have 

 a kind of accuracy— sufficient at any rate to enable us to say that 

 neither artist nor editor have always named the plants correctly : e. g. 

 on plate 39, where what is called " Premorse Scabious" is almost 

 certainly Scabiosa Columbaria and " Small Scabious" is quite 

 certainly Jasione montanal There is ample ground for further 

 criticism— as to its weight, for example, nearly 3 lb. !— but we 

 have already devoted more space to the volume than it deserves. 

 It is however important that the real value of a book of this kind 

 should be plainly stated, because the reviews in the ordinary 



