408 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



" That Rock-Garden of Ours,"* by F. E. Hulme (1909, 10s. 6d.), is 

 a thick, rather prettily illustrated volume, chiefly dealing with many 

 British plants and the commoner sub- Alpines, and giving many bits 

 of plant lore and other matter not very closely connected with what we 

 expect now in a book devoted to rock-gardening. It is a discursive, 

 instructive, genial book for one who likes to read Parkinson's and 

 Gerard's remarks at second hand. 



" The Story of my Rock-Garden,"* by A. Reginald Malby (1912), 

 would be well worth the modest half-crown the volume costs for the 

 lovely coloured photographs and half-tone illustrations alone. It also 

 gives very useful hints for the cultivation of Alpines, on a small scale, 

 and anyone, however long he may have been building and tending 

 rock-gardens, can learn much from this book. 



Another class of books needed by the serious student of Alpine 

 plants includes several good floras, some for the whole of Europe, 

 others of countries containing high mountains, or of mountainous 

 districts only. 



Woods' " Tourist's Flora," published in 1850 and costing now 

 about 305., gives a great deal of information. Its aim is to aid the 

 lover of botany in determining the names of any wild plants he may 

 meet with when journeying in the British Islands, France, Germany, 

 Switzerland, and Italy. The descriptions are necessarily much con- 

 densed, but good keys are given to many genera, so that it is easy 

 to hunt down a plant. The localities and nature of habitats are very 

 full and useful, but the names are rather out of date compared with 

 more modern floras. 



Nyman's "Conspectus Florae Europaeae,"* 1878-1882, with the 

 Additamenta of 1886 and two Supplements in 1883-4 an d 1889-90 

 respectively, is a scarce and precious work, fetching £6 or more. It is 

 really a list of European plants with their authors and localities, 

 and also gives reference to exsiccata, a feature which forms a specially 

 valuable portion of the work. Only occasionally is there any descrip- 

 tion, and then chiefly such as " a praeced. parum diversa," or in stating 

 wherein a named form differs from the type, or if considered a hybrid. 

 All its information, however, is so reliable that it is still the book 

 of reference on the distribution of European plants, and hence its high 

 price. 



Koch's " Synopsis der Deutschen und Schweizer Flora," 1890, in 

 continuation, is a somewhat similar work for a smaller district, with 

 very full lists of localities and much information, but in German. 



Gremli's "Swiss Flora," translated by Leonard W. Paitson from 

 the fifth edition, 1889, is invaluable as a pocket text-book for the 

 Swiss Alps. The plan of its keys is good, and a little practice should 

 enable anyone, with Gremli's aid, to name every plant found in 

 Switzerland. 



There is a good French edition of Schinz and Keller's " Flore 

 de la Suisse," revised by Wilczek and Schinz, Lausanre, 1909. There 

 does not seem much to choose between this and Gremli for working 



