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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



is drought in the desert, to which de Vries refers. The " response " 

 is " adaptations," e.g. thick cuticle, fleshiness, spinescence, &c. 

 Stabihty may or may not remain. ZiUa myagroides, a spiny bush ni 

 the desert, becomes a large-leaved spineless plant in cultivation. But 

 African fleshy Euphorbias remain so, wherever they 'be grown, contrary 

 to the statement that ' ' nothing in the way of stability has resulted from 

 the action of the dry soil." * 



An essay on ''The Personality of Darwin," dealing with the 

 enormous amount of work done under the most distressing ill-health 

 gives an insight into his patient endurance and determination, and how 

 essential work was to him. He showed " how clearly he recognized 

 that the love of knowledge for its own sake was the one essential 

 qualification of a scientific man." 



Other essays deal with Darwin's views in connexion with colour 

 and mimicry, of which Prof. Poulton is so excellent an exponent. 



Altogether the work is a most important one ; and the writer has put 

 together a large amount of matter in which Darwin is always the central 

 and attractive figure. 



" The Naturalist on the River Amazons : a Record of Adventures, 

 tiabits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects 

 of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel." By 

 Henry Walter Bates, F.R.S. 8vo., x. + 394 pp. ; with 39 illustrations. 

 (Murray, London, 1910.) Is. net. 



Although Bates landed at Paraguay in 1848, and although the 

 original volume was published so long ago as 1863, this classic story 

 of a naturalist's adventures is still most interesting, and is even an 

 essential part of a scientist's education. 



The catholic nature of his interest in the strange and new country, 

 of which he was one of the earliest scientific pioneers, is perhaps one 

 of the reasons for the extraordinary charm of this volume. 



In modern books of travel one finds that naturalists have visited 

 some of the most out-of-the-way parts in the world simply to study the 

 Jungermanniaceae or the Buprestidae. 



Bates was enthusiastic about everything, keenly interested in 

 Indians, beasts, birds, insects, and plants of every sort and kind. 



What could better this description of a common variety of tropical 

 vegetation? — " There was not much green underwood except in 

 places where bamboos grew ; these formed impenetrable thickets of 

 plumy foliage and thorny, jointed stems, which always compelled us 

 to make a circuit to avoid them. The earth itself was encumbered with 

 rotting fruits, gigantic beanpods, leaves, limbs and trunks of trees; 

 fixing the impression of its being the cemetery as well as the birth- 

 place of the great world of vegetation overhead. Some of the trees were 

 of prodigious height. We passed many specimens of the Moratinga, 

 whose cylindrical trunks, I dare not say how many feet in circum- 



* " The Centenary of Darwin," Quarterly JR.cview, July 1909. p. 36, 



