446 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



" The Land of the Blue Poppy : Travels of a Naturalist in Eastern 

 Tibet." By F. Kingdon Ward. 8vo., xii + 283 pp. (University 

 Press, Cambridge, 1913.) 12s. net. 



There is a fascination and a mystery about Tibet that makes 

 one eager to read of the journeys made by those whose good fortune 

 it is to penetrate into that country of almost unknown peoples. Few 

 Europeans have entered it yet, and though the veil of mystery is rent 

 in places it is still complete enough to obscure the vision, and the 

 fascination remains. Furthermore, the climate is such that we may 

 be certain that the majority of the plants the country holds will 

 prove hardy in England, and it was for these the author went, and 

 he secured seeds of not a few for Messrs. Bees. Some of his new 

 plants have already been figured in our Journal, and several have 

 been seen at our Exhibitions. 



The author is, however, not only a botanist, but a geographer of 

 no mean attainments. He is, perhaps, not even first a botanist, 

 and though the descriptions of the vegetation he met with are good, 

 yet the descriptions of the curious conformation of the country he 

 traversed, and of the conditions that so greatly determine the nature 

 of the vegetation, are better still. He found the people friendly, though 

 he travelled in troubled times and along forbidden paths, and most 

 of the trials he had to endure, apart from the discomforts inseparable 

 from travel in an untra veiled land, arose from the weather and the 

 deeply-cut gorges which cleave the high plateau which constitutes 

 East Tibet. The journey lay about the upper reaches of the three 

 great rivers Mekong, Salween, and Yang-tze, and its story is told 

 clearly and well, while the illustrations and whole " get up " of the 

 book are admirable. 



" Principles and Practice of School Gardening." By Alexander 

 Logan. 8vo., 313 pp., with coloured frontispiece and 102 other 

 illustrations. (Macmillan, London, 1913.) 3s. 6d. 



There are now a number of books dealing with school gardening, 

 and on the whole the one now before us is the best we have seen. 

 From cover to cover it is full of suggestions which cannot but be 

 of the greatest help to the school-garden teacher in arranging his 

 lessons. 



As a source of purely horticultural information it will here and 

 there be found wanting, the fruit section being particularly weak. 

 Furthermore, the recommendations are not always in accordance with 

 the best horticultural practice. For example, on page 165, the spring 

 is given as the best time for planting a new strawberry bed, and on 

 page 245 the root pruning of standard trees is talked of. Red Currants 

 are said to fruit similarly to Gooseberries and to require to be pruned 

 in the same way, whereas Red Currants bear entirely upon the spurs 

 and need to be pruned in the same way as Pears, and not in the same 

 way as Gooseberries. 



The apple tree represented in figure 84 (reproduced from a Leaflet 



