374 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
" Calendar of Flowering- Trees and Shrubs." By Henry Hoare. 
(Richard Flint & Co., Fleet Street, London.) 
A beautifully printed book with a few well executed coloured plates. 
Under the heading of the twelve months of the year a list is given of 
trees and shrubs in bloom in each, and then a description of them follows 
arranged in alphabetical order. The great difficulty in preparing such a 
book must have been to decide what not to include, and if the author had 
spread his net a trifle wider we should not have complained ; but perhaps 
it is better to include too little than to include too much, and thereby 
disappoint those who expect a flowering tree or shrub to be of necessity a 
very showy one. It is worthy of a place in the library or on the drawing- 
room table of any English country house. 
" Guide to Garden Plants." By John Weathers. (Longmans, Green 
k Co., London and New York.) 21s. 
It is impossible to do justice to a book of 1,000 pages in the few lines 
permitted for review, but let us say at once that this will be a useful book 
for amateurs wanting a dictionary of hardy out-door garden plants. That 
the book owes much to Mr. Nicholson's invaluable " Dictionary of Gar- 
dening " is self-evident, but so must any book of this description if it is 
to be worth having. But whilst on the one hand Mr. Nicholson's book 
covers much more ground than the present, and is therefore far more 
complete, Mr. Weathers's contains more, or at least more frequently 
repeated, cultural notes ; and though it would be absurd to suppose that 
so lengthy a book could be faultless, still we can recommend it for just 
the purpose for which it is intended, viz., for amateurs wanting to grow 
hardy out-door plants, and absolutely ignorant of what to grow or how 
to grow them. There is one thing we should strongly recommend in any 
future edition, and that is making it into two volumes, as in its present 
form it is somewhat unwieldy for a book intended, as it is, for constant 
every-day reference. Or perhaps a better emendation still would be to 
omit almost all the first 130 pages and all of the sections dealing with 
Fruit and Vegetables, and to make it a book of simply Hardy (and a few 
Half-hardy) flowering plants. The sections on Fruit and Vegetables 
would, we think, hardly be missed, for scant justice is done to these two 
important departments of a garden — how scant may be judged by com- 
paring the 900 pages devoted to Flowers with the 74 allowed for Fruit, 
and the 66 considered enough for the whole Vegetable garden. The 
element of true proportion seems to have been lacking here. 
"Flora of Bournemouth." By Edward F. Linton, M.A. (H. G. 
Commin, Bournemouth.) 
An admirable handbook to the flowers and ferns of the district included 
in a twelve-mile radius of Bournemouth, giving many different localities 
in which each plant is to be found, together with chapters on the climate, 
geology, &c., of the district. Our great fear for such books is lest they 
should fall into the hands of some who, learning from them where rare 
plants are to be found, should forthwith proceed to exterminate them in 
their ambition to annex all that is rarest of our native flora. We ourselves 
know of the habitat of one exceedingly rare British plant, but we reli- 
