THE AMERICAN 



BOTANIST 



119 



There are upwards of two hundred ihustrations, mostly of 

 plant parts which should aid the beginner in his study of rela- 

 tionships. The volumes in "The Thresholds of Science" series 

 sell for 50 cents each. 



When the author of "The Natural History of the Farm" 

 was a boy, he was lucky if he had other books than "Wood's 

 Natural History" as a guide to the wild life about him. Now 

 there are a multitude of guides to every phase of nature and 

 yet the reviewer doubts whether any or all of them would be as 

 useful or entertaining to the boy on the farm or the city child 

 turned back to nature as this new natural history. Prof. Need- 

 ham, the author, appears to have touched upon all the features 

 of outdoor life with which the child in the country is likely to 

 come in contact. The book is really a volume on nature study, 

 but the whole subject has been treated so sympathetically and 

 the academic part so skillfully concealed that the reader is not 

 likely to connect the idea of study with it. Any boy or girl 

 who has to be urged to read the book through must be lacking 

 som'ewhere. It oug'ht to be a positive delight to fill up those 

 outlines at the end of the chapters. Older readers are likely to 

 remark, 'Tf I had only had a book like that when I was young." 

 One cannot adequately describe the charm of such a book; it 

 must be seen and read to be properly appreciated. There are 

 about fifty chapters and more than a hundred illustrations but 

 this means nothing; it is what is in the chapters that counts. 

 "The Natural History of the Farm" is published by the Com- 

 stock Publishing Co., Ithica, N. Y., at $T50. 



Gardening in America. — At least the phase of it that 

 has to do with the cultivation of flowering plants in the open — 

 is a long way behind the practice in England. It is therefore 

 not surprising that the bulk of the gardening books still comes 

 from across the water. One of the newer books of this nature 

 is the "Hardy Flower Book" by E. H. Jenkins which is de- 

 voted entirely to the growing of the hardy herbaceous peren- 



