BOOK REVIEWS. 



251 



of soil analysis in use, and a selected bibliography adds greatly to the 

 value of the book. 



" Injurious Insects : How to recognize and control them." By 

 W. C. O'Kane. 8vo, xi + 414 pp. (Macmillan, New York, 1912.) 

 8s. 6d. net. 



Of the injurious insects dealt with and figured in the pages of this 

 American book, a large number are known and many are dreaded in 

 this country. The pests of all kinds of crops are included, and they 

 are figured by means of photo-process blocks. We prefer clearly- 

 drawn line figures for the illustration of a book of this sort, but many 

 of the photographs reproduced are of above the average merit and add 

 to the readiness with which insects may be identified. The text gives 

 an account of the symptoms of attack, very lucidly written, and of 

 the damage done, and a life history of the pest. Where they are known, 

 appropriate methods of dealing with the pests are quoted, and full 

 details of these methods are given in the opening chapters. It is a 

 clearly written, well-got-up book, which the ordinary cultivator will 

 find very valuable. 



" British Fern Varieties." By F. G. Heath. 8vo, xvi + 271 pp. 

 (Kelly, London, 1912.) 3s. 6d. net. 



Mr. Heath's books have been widely read, by fern lovers perhaps 

 especially, and they have until this last dealt with the normal forms 

 of our native ferns. This deals with some of the varietal types which 

 the advanced fern-hunter has found so frequently and cherished so 

 tenderly. The author says : "I am a firm believer in ' royal roads ' 

 . . . to knowledge." We are all conversant with the myriads of 

 technical terms with which scientific treatises are loaded, and since 

 botany (or at least a love of plants and an effort to understand some- 

 thing of their ways) is one of the most popular of the branches of 

 knowledge, botanical science has come in for more than the usual number 

 of knocks on this score from the popular writer. Perhaps it has a little 

 deserved some, for there has been a class of botanists well satisfied if 

 they could give a name to a plant — they are now happily few and far 

 between. The present author complains that " scores of books on 

 botany give only the scientific names (as they are called) of plants, and 

 hence are obviously quite unintelligible to those . . . who have to 

 confess ignorance of the ' learned language ' ! " He goes on to remedy 

 this state of affairs by giving " common " names to many of the 

 varieties — as thus : ' Deeply-cleft True Maidenhair,' ' Ear-lobed 

 Common Polypody,' ' Double-pinnuled Common Polypody,' ' Skeleton 

 Soft-Prickly Shield Fern,' ' Grandly-tasselled Soft-Prickly Shield 

 Fern,' 1 Refracted Rock Spleenwort,' and so on. It is needless to 

 repeat others, but surely these are not " common " names. After a 

 lifetime among plants we have never heard them mentioned ! In 

 spite of these, and gibes which were perhaps better left out of a book 

 there is much of interest and much of information in this little work, 



