398 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
BOOK REVIEWS. 
"A Guide to the Identification of our more Useful Timbers : being a Manual 
for the Use of Students of Forestry." By Herbert Stone. 8vo. 52 pp. (Uni- 
versity Press, Cambridge, 1920.) 7s. td. net. 
The introductory note with reference to the differences between coni- 
ferous and broad-leaved trees, and how best to go about the work of identi- 
fication, is clearly stated and of great value, while the few sections illustrated, 
which we could have wished for a greater extension of, will help considerably 
in elucidating the text. Though mainly intended as a manual for the use of 
students of forestry, Mr. Stone's carefully compiled work, which extends 
to some fifty pages, with a dozen well-executed illustrations, will no doubt 
appeal to the more scientifically inclined foresters and woodmen. 
" The Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil." By John Sargeaunt. (B. H. 
''Blackwell, Oxford, 1920.) 6s. net. ^ 
A pleasant and scholarly little book, giving a list in alphabetical order of 
the generic names of plants mentioned by Virgil. 
The essential portions of the lines in which they occur are quoted, and where 
possible the name used by the poet is identified with its modern botanical 
equivalent. Then follows a short account of the. old-time lore and legend of 
the plant, and references to its -rnention in the works of other classical writers. 
This part of the work is so well done, and so evidently the outcome of con- 
siderable study, that it is a pity that some of the facts concerning the plants 
themselves are not equally accurate. 
The writer tells us he has grown many of them, but his garden evidently 
does not include the Butcher's Broom or he would surely never have written 
that it dies down every year. It is strange to find hashish, which is made from 
hemp, spoken of as obtained from the capsules of the Opium Poppy. 
It would be more correct to state that the Saffron extends from Kurdistan 
to the Mediterranean as a cultivated, instead of as a native plant, and again the 
large purple Crocuses of our gardens are derived from C. vernus and not, as 
stated, from C. versicolor. 
Chives, Allium Schoenoprasum, grows wild in France, Spain, and Portugal, 
though here denied a Continental station in Western Europe. There is, how- 
ever, so much that is interesting and informative to be found that these and 
a few other inaccuracies may be forgiven, and we hope will be amended in a 
future edition. 
" The Practical Book of Outdoor Rose Growing for the Home Garden." 
By George C. Thomas, Jr. 8vo. 224 pp. (Lippincott, Philadelphia and London, 
1920.) Garden Edition, 12s. 6d. ; Edition de Luxe, with a greater number of 
illustrations, 30s. 
Previous editions of this book appeared in 1914, 1915, and 1916, and the 
present " Garden " Edition has added to it, after the index, a chapter of some 
half-dozen pages on rose development from 191 7 to 1920. The writer considers 
that the new American law restricting the importation of plants should be of 
benefit to American outdoor rose-lovers by stimulating the production of 
American roses, causing more roses to be propagated on suitable stocks and 
keeping both suitable and unsuitable foreign varieties from being imported on 
unsuitable stocks. 
The stocks chiefly used in America are much the same as with us, save, 
perhaps, that they are somewhat fonder of R. multiflora as a stock, and it appears 
from the author's pages that the roses we find the best in this country usually 
bear a similar character across the water. It seems therefore a little difficult to 
follow how the American purchaser of rose plants will really benefit as he suggests. 
He reviews some score of hybrid teas, teas, and hybrid musks, which do 
not find a place in the body of his work, though some of them {e.g. ' Peace,' 1903) 
are of some standing. He also gives a recipe for the prevention of black spot, 
consisting in treating the beds with sulphate of iron in autumn, spraying weekly 
with ammoniacal carbonate of copper till after the first bloorn is finished and 
