256 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL^ SOCIETY. j 



chapter IV. to understand it in detail, as it is too complicated to be 

 reproduced here. Every chapter or essay is full of interesting matter. 



" Catalogue of the Plants collected by Mr. and Mrs. P. A. Talbot 

 in the Oban District, South Nigeria." By A. B. Rendle, E. G. Baker, 

 H. F. Wernham, S. Moore, and others, x -J- 158 pp., with 17 plates. 

 (British Museum, Natural History.) 9s. 



This modest but thorough little volume is an interesting evidence 

 of the solid contributions to botanical knowledge which are constantly 

 in progress in the National Herbarium, side by side with the various 

 popular works for students which have emanated from it of late years. 

 We regret that the map of the district, published in the Geographical 

 Journal, has not been reproduced in this volume, which contains 

 no precise indication of the latitude and longitude of the area in 

 question. That in three years a collection of 1016 species should 

 have been made and many of them illustrated, as we are told in Dr. 

 Rendle 's preface, by large drawings, says much for the industry of 

 the collectors, and we are sorry that by the fortune, or misfortune, 

 of publication, Talbotia S. Moore of May 1913 is anticipated by 

 Afrofittonia Lindau of March in the same year. That the collection 

 contained nine new genera and 195 new species is an indication of 

 the extent to which our rapidly advancing knowledge of the flora 

 of tropical Africa is rendering the Kew Flora obsolete before it is 

 completed. The chief physiological point of interest would seem 

 to be the puzzle of cauliflory, the sending forth of blossoms from the 

 stems and other old wood of trees, a phenomenon familiar throughout 

 the tropics, as, for instance, in the well-known case of the Cacao 

 (Theobroma), but especially common in this South Nigerian flora. 

 The statement (p. viii) that some of these cauliflorous trees " only 

 blossom every two or three years," or, according to the natives, only 

 " once in seven years," is suggestive, and may support Schimper's 

 opinion that the phenomenon was connected with the softness and 

 non-resistance of the bark. 



There is, of course, nothing very new in Mr. Talbot's observation 

 of the immense specific variety of the tropical forests, which he puts 

 at 400-500 species to the square mile ; but Mr. E. G. Baker's new 

 genus Crater anthus, " intermediate in structure between Napoleona 

 and the tropical South American Asteranthos," and Mr. Wernham's 

 Ajrohamelia, " most nearly allied to the tropical American Harnelia," 

 seem to us interesting evidence for Dr. von Jhering's Archhelenis 

 or Freeh's Sud-Atlantis, i.e. a continental connexion between South 

 America and Africa in late Tertiary times. 



It is somewhat remarkable that none of the Cryptogamia proved 

 novel. 



A slightly misleading note is prefixed to the Index, to the effect 

 that " Names in the systematic list are not included," whereas the fact 

 is that only such names are excluded as occur only in the systematic 

 list, which is a list of the entire collection. 



