BOOK EEVIEWS. 



509 



and justly appreciated by everyone who takes an interest in matters 

 pertaining to our forest trees. We think it was wise to leave severely 

 alone the original work, with its characteristically quaint style of dealing 

 with our forest trees, the descriptions and uses to which the timbers 

 are applied appealing as truly to us to-day as they did when the great 

 work appeared fully two and a half centuries ago. We certainly feel 

 that Dr. Nisbet has done his part of the work well, and we are only 

 sorry that the price will be the most serious drawback to its general use. 



"The Book of Garden Pests." By R. Hooper Pearson, F.R.H.S. 

 8vo., 214 pp. (John Lane, London, 1908.) 2s. 6d, net. 



The position Mr. Hooper Pearson holds as assistant editor of the 

 " Gardeners' Chronicle " has given him a unique opportunity of 

 becoming acquainted with the particular diseases and pests which most 

 do trouble the gardener ; and he has dipped freely into the pages of the 

 magazine with which he is connected, and into such books as Miss 

 Ormerod's "Handbook of Injurious Insects," Dr. Cooke's "Fungoid 

 Pests," and Mr. Massee's " Text-Book of Plant Diseases," and extracted 

 therefrom the most approved methods of dealing with these pests. The 

 gardener who is too busy to study from a more exact standpoint the 

 fungi and insects which meet him at every turn, will find here an 

 excellent account of the symptoms by which he may recognize the more 

 commonly occurring attacks upon plants and the best means of getting 

 the better of them ; and this is precisely the kind of thing most gardeners 

 require. Many of the pests are illustrated in a manner calculated to 

 make their appearance clear and to show the main points in their life- 

 histories. 



"First Course in Biology." By L. H. Bailey and W. M. Coleman. 

 8vo., 592 pp. (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1908.) 7s. 6d. 



The tendency in American secondary schools " is away from the 

 formal technical completion of separate subjects and toward the develop- 

 ing of a workable training in the activities that relate the pupil to his 

 own life." The tendency is shown only to a slight extent in secondary 

 schools in England at the present time ; but there are signs that the 

 revolt against the method of teaching adopted, and wisely adopted, in 

 the university is beginning, and a method more in keeping with the 

 calibre and requirements of the children to be educated is taking its 

 place. The revolt has gone farther in the elementary schools, where the 

 Nature-study method has in many cases been adopted with excellent 

 results where it has been recognized that Nature- study is a method of 

 education and not a subject for instruction. The present volume is an 

 effort to meet the need of those schools where it is felt that " the ideals 

 and abilities should be developed out of the common surroundings and 

 affairs of life, rather than imposed on the pupil as a matter of abstract, 

 unrelated theory." The first part of the book deals with plants (204 pp.) ? 

 and is written by Professor Bailey ; the second (224 pp.) is concerned 

 with animal biology ; and the third (164 pp.) with human biology, these 

 parts being written by Mr. W. M. Coleman. Like all the books with 

 which Professor Bailey has to do, we have here one where the spirit of 



