— 7o— 



tion, though birds and other wild creatures are not overlooked. In 

 this day of almost a surfeit of books on Nature, the present 

 volume is welcome by reason of its superior merit. The author 

 is sometimes woefully astray in her botany, to be sure, but this is 

 doubtless to be set down to her too implicit reliance upon common 

 names. In Ornithology, where Mrs. Wright is best known, the 

 birds have common names that are fairly constant, but this state 

 of affairs does not exist in the allied province of botany. There is a 

 list of the flowers mentioned with their scientific equivalents at 

 the end of the book, but it would have been much easier for the 

 reader if these had been added where the common names occur in 

 the text. A large number of the illustrations are from photo- 

 graphs—and photographs of an excellence rarely equaled in books 

 of similar character. The illustrations from drawings are good, 

 but by no means the equals of the others. The Fern part of the 

 title is based upon a single chapter. 



Those who buy " Nature Studies in Berkshire "% in theex- 

 pectation of getting long treatises upon birds, bugs, flowers and 

 such like subjects, will be disappointed, but it will be an agreeable 

 disappointment. The birds and flowers are there, but they stand 

 for something more than material from which to make lists of 

 species. Before the reader has gone a dozen pages into the book 

 he sees that here is one who not only loves nature and sees her 

 from a unique and individual standpoint, but is able to set down 

 his thoughts in entertaining form. The author is a contemplative 

 naturalist, wholly devoid of a desire to "collect" unless it be a 

 nosegay for a friend or a bouquet for the house, and his work fre- 

 quently reminds one of an earlier New England writer, Wilson 

 Flagg, whose books on similar subjects are still worth reading. 

 " Nature Studies" was first issued nearly two years ago, but the 

 popular edition has just appeared It can be recommended to all 

 as an example of virile and expressive English, as well as an inter- 

 esting volume on the natural history of western Massachusetts. 

 The book is well printed and is illustrated with sixteen plates 

 from photographs. 



The Editor's book, "Our Ferns in their Haunts," which was 

 issued early last month from the press of the F. A. Stokes Co., is 

 an attempt to provide information about our ferns that cannot be 

 gleaned from the ordinary text-book. In compiling the data re- 



* Nature Studies in Berkshire, by John Coleman Adams. New York: 

 G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1901. 4to. pp. 225. 



