BOOK REVIEWS. 



485 



hundreds of rofias, like the interior of some great temple, a most 

 peculiar and beautiful sight, the great fronds above us quite shutting 

 out the sunshine and making a green twilight below them." 



" With the Flowers and Trees in California." By Charles Francis 

 Saunders. (Grant Richards, London, 1914.) 7s. 6d. net. 



This is a delightful book for many reasons. The flowers of Cali- 

 fornia are both beautiful and interesting enough to make a good 

 subject. The author shows an intimate knowledge of the plants as 

 they grow, and also of their botany as derived from books, and has 

 evidently spent much time in studying records of the early pioneers 

 and travellers. But much of its charm is due to the fact, stated in 

 the preface, that "the author has tried to revive, as vividly as may 

 be, the memory of his own delight and inquisitiveness " when he first 

 saw the floral wealth of the country. 



This he has thoroughly succeeded in doing, and many of the pages 

 make one share the enthusiasm of a discovery and the pleasures of 

 the excursions in the wilds. For much of the book consists of vivid 

 descriptions of flower hunts and is arranged as conversations between 

 an artist, guides and storekeepers, and a well-informed and kindly 

 professor, from whom we get accurate and solid information with a 

 tone of authority, but in everyday language, and much pleasanter 

 to read than if the same facts had been quoted direct from the printed 

 books and reports that doubtless furnished them. The Spanish and 

 local names are always explained and accounted for, and add great 

 interest to the whole. 



As an instance we are told that the Spanish-Californian distinguishes 

 the two forms of thicket undiscriminating Americans confuse as 

 " scrub." Chamisal is one, and is a dense mass of chamiso, the Spanish 

 name for Adenostoma or greasewood ; chaparral, the other, consists 

 of thorny shrubs and small trees, in which the chaparro, or scrub 

 live-oak, predominates. Because a rider would get his clothing cut 

 to shreds in passing through it, he envelops his legs in chapparrajos, 

 leather overalls, that cowboys and novelists have shortened to "snaps." 

 A chapter devoted to the Giant Redwood is absolutely thrilling, and 

 the reader gets as much excited as to whether the accepted name shall 

 be Wellingtonia, Washingtonia, or Sequoia as he would to discover 

 the forger and villain, or stolen heir, in certain novels. The chapter 

 on the early collectors is a very interesting one, and has much to say 

 of David Douglas, " the man of grass," as the name given him by the 

 Indians signified. Few realize how many good plants we owe to this 

 intrepid collector, sent out by our Society in 1831. Garry a elliptica, 

 and Nemophila insignis, and the Douglas Spruce, for instance, were 

 among them, and his journals, recently published in extenso by the 

 Royal Horticultural Society, are well worth study. Another fasci- 

 nating chapter deals with the Indian uses of Californian plants. Food, 

 medicine, soap, and weaving materials were ready to hand in the 



