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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of dead leaves to such plants as Solomon's Seal, Strawberry, 

 Orohus vermis, and Euonymus europaeus are novel in ' design and 

 charmingly harmonious in effect. If the artist excels in any on6 

 special point, perhaps it is in portraying berries with glittering high- 

 lights upon them, as may be seen in those just splitting of the 

 Euonymus, and also in the Black Bryony, Mistletoe, Hawthorn, Dog 

 Eose and Arum. The blue Succory on its flaring background of ripe 

 golden corn is startlingly audacious in design, but equally pleasing in 

 effect. The sole exception is Physalis Alkehengi, which on its dead 

 black background reminds one painfully of certain Italian mosaics in 

 black marble Continental travellers at one time brought home, with 

 w^hich to encumber drawing-room tables. The text is divided into 

 three long chapters, describing the plants that would be found in 

 rambles among meadows, hedges, and woods in spring, summer, and 

 autumn, a chapter for each season, and the illustrations are arranged 

 at the end of the book and in the order of the flowering or fruiting of 

 the plants. One thing mars this book as a companion for the former: 

 it is one -eighth of an inch taller, which prevents its going into a size 

 of shelf that just holds the sister volume, and in which many other 

 books on alpine plants can comfortably repose. A specially designed 

 torture-chamber, in which the walls contract and squeeze the victim, 

 should be ready for the publisher who turns out books on kindred 

 subjects so variant in height as to necessitate their exile from their 

 kith and kin on a distant shelf. 



" Plantae Thonnerianae Congolenses. " Serie II. E. de Wilde- 

 man. xvii + 465 pp. One map, 20 lithographic plates, 1 coloured 

 pi., and 51 figs, in text. (Misch and Thron, Brussels, 1911.) 

 13.50 fr. 



This second volume treats of the plants observed and collected 

 by M. Fr. Thonner in the districts of Bangala and Ubangi of the 

 Belgian Congo in 1909, during his second expedition in that region. 

 This journey is shortly described by M. Thonner in the introduc- 

 tion, and the rest of the work is divided into three. 



1. Geo-botanical Notes. 



Central Forest Zone. 

 Northern Zone. 

 Tabulation of distribution. 

 Sudd plants. 



2. Ijist of plants collected by M. Thonner. 



3. A systematic arrangement of the flora of the districts of 

 Bangala and Ubangi. 



Judging from the plates, the plants dealt with are mostly small- 

 flowered and unlikely to be of horticultural value, but from a botanical 

 point of view the full references to the older and the clear diagnoses 

 of the many new species, together with the careful lists showing 

 distribution, make this volume one of prime importance to a student 

 of the plants of these districts of the Congo. 



