REVIEWS 



283 



is the Mississippi River ? Certainly, the vegetation cannot concern him much, being mainly of southern 

 American affinities. The boreal element is extremely small, but a few familiar plants like Milium effusum 

 and Liparis loeselii are native in the northern counties. Of the 2,450 odd species recorded from this State 

 some 25 per cent are introductions, mostly from Europe. Only three endemics have survived the rapid 

 destruction of the natural prairie and forests : the cornfields and cows have triumphed, and over a large 

 part of the area " there is scarcely a foot of waste land." 



/ 



This book is a scholarly and scientific enumeration, without descriptions and keys, which will interest 

 those who are working on bibliography, distribution maps and county floras because there has been nothing 

 quite like it here. The accent is on bibliography, on the concise and complete presentation of all the references 

 to each species in published works relating to the area since the days of Michaux (died 1802). The method 

 has, of course, required a good deal of synonymy, both nomenclatural and taxonomic, and the book sometimes 

 looks rather like a cross between a monograph and a county flora. In the very numerous outline maps 

 at the head of pages distribution is shown by various symbols placed in the counties of Illinois. A novel 

 feature is the quotation of the type locality of each species when that was designated. There is hardly ever 

 a paragraph of criticism or comment, and no appeal whatever to the imagination after the four-page intro- 

 ductory sketch of the area and its vegetation. It seems a, model and admirable book of reference, but such 

 formal perfection is lifeless and one returns with relief to the more old-fashioned, rambling style of an 

 English county flora, 



N. Y. Sandwith. 



