126 



REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 



The Botanical Survey of Scotland. Parts HI. and IV. Forfar 

 and Fife. By the late Robert Smith, B.Sc, and William Q. Smith, 



Uni\ersity of Leeds. (The 'Scottish Geographical Mag-azine,' XX. and 

 XXL, December 1904 and January, February, March 1905; 70 pp., 17 

 fig-ures and 2 maps.) 



It is almost natural that the botanical survey of Britain 

 should beg-in on the hills and moors of Scotland and the 

 Pennines of Eng-land, which in former days did so much towards 

 inspiring the pioneers of the Geolog-ical Survey. It is on the 

 moors best of all that the botanist feels at first the chaos of 

 veg-etation, but perceives at leng-th that the chang-es of vegeta- 

 tion are ordered and determined by conditions of climate and 

 soil. The survey of Forfar and Fife, though the most recent 

 of the series of botanical surveys, is in reality the parent 

 stock of the papers already published on the vegetation of 

 the Edinburgh District, Northern Perthshire, Yorkshire, and 

 Westmorland, For it was in the fields, hedges, and woods of 

 Fife that the late Robert Smith recognised his first plants and 

 made an herbarium ; it was during excursions round Dundee 

 with a working-men's field club that he added knowledge of 

 plants ; and it was in University College, Dundee, as under- 

 graduate, and then as Assistant Professor, that he evolved the 

 main ideas which control botanical survey in Britain to-day. 

 The two maps and some of the matter of this paper were left 

 incomplete by its original author, and have been completed and 

 edited by his elder brother. The maps are an interesting record 

 of vegetation, for tlie area is intersected by. Strathmore, ' the 

 great valley,' which has ever separateid the Highlanders of 

 Scotland from the Lowlanders. The vegetation shows the 

 same influence, for it is lowland in type to the south of Strath- 

 more, and highland to the north of it. The map of Forfar is 

 as near to an ideal vegetation map as any enthusiast may wish, 

 for the zones of vegetation follow in almost parallel sequence 

 from the sea-coast to an altitude of over 3,000 feet. Contrasting 

 the matter of the paper with that of the Yorkshire surveys 

 (see ' Naturalist,' June 1903, p. 221, and September 1903, p. 377 ; 

 also Lewis, 'Geographical Journal,' 1904), there are several 

 topics of interest. The woodland includes much of the Birch 

 Wood (see figure), which once was widespread in Yorkshire, 

 bat is now reduced to small scattered remnants. A brief 

 description is given of the vegetation in Caenlochan Forest, 

 probably the highest forest of large size in Britain — its upper 



Naturalist, 



