142 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



" The Story of Plant Life in the British Isles." By A. R. Horwood, 

 F.L.S. Vol. III. 8vo. xvi-f-514 pp. (Churchill, London, 1915.) 

 6s. 6d. net. 



We wish we could say the whole of this book was as good as the 

 excellent frontispiece, for its aim is excellent ; but, like its two pre- 

 decessors, it is in many places discursive and unreliable. Of Wolffia 

 arrhiza, e.g., it is written : " About the size of a grain of sand ; the fronds 

 are J inch long by J inch broad, are thick, and swollen underneath, sub- 

 globular, linear, oblong, flat above, loosely cellular below, cleft near 

 the base, solitary at the base. The young frond separates from within 

 the base of the old one, and is soon detached. The walls of the epider- 

 mal cells are straight." Hooker gives a fuller, more accurate descrip- 

 tion, in fewer words : " Fronds like grains of sand, rootless, oblong or 

 subglobose, flattened above, loosely cellular beneath, proliferous, cleft 

 near the base ; 2V mcn l° n g> 4V mcn broad ; young solitary at the 

 base of the old, soon detached ; epidermal cells with straight walls " ; 

 and while the generic characters and this species are described by 

 Hooker in fourteen lines, a page and a half are occupied in this book 

 by a confused, inaccurate description which tells us nothing Hooker 

 omits or indicates. 



The book is well produced, in grey cloth binding, and well printed 

 in open type. Many of the illustrations are excellent pictures of the 

 plants they represent, but some might well have been more clear. 



" The Principles of Agriculture through the School and the Home 

 Garden." By C. A. Stebbins, M.S. 8vo. xxviii + 380 pp. (Macmillan 

 Co., New York, 1913.) 4s. 6d. net. 



This is a book about many things all more or less connected 

 with rural life, and it is apparently intended as a school reader. 

 In this country it will be of more value to the rural school teacher 

 than to anyone else, but all interested with the re-population 

 of country districts and with keeping the connexion between the 

 people and rural industries will profit by its perusal, though it is 

 scarcely to be expected that they will agree with all the suggestions 

 put forward. 



Plant life, the soil, the school-garden, the rural home, personal 

 and communal hygiene, insects and disease, birds and insects, the 

 advantages of rural life, and the like are the author's themes, and they 

 are all stated in terms of child life and illustrated by numerous small 

 figures of children and gardens, not all very well reproduced. 



" Soil Conditions and Plant Growth." By E. J. Russell, D.Sc. 

 Ed. 2. 8vo. viii + 190 pp. (Longmans, Green, 1915.) 55. net. 



A second edition of this useful summary of the present condition 

 of Soil Science has soon been called for, for the first appeared in 1912. 

 Progress is continually being made in various directions, but perhaps 

 most actively in the investigation of the relationship between the 



