590 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



" Botany: Chapters on the Study of Plants." By G. S. Boiilger. 

 8vo. viii + 120 pp. (Milner, Halifax, 1912.) Is. net. 



A capital chapter on the beginnings of botanical knowledge opens 

 this useful little book. It deals with the work of the earlier botanists, 

 and leads up to a consideration of the botanist's methods and to 

 chapters on the life and distribution in time and space of British plants. 

 It is a simple and accurate introduction to the study of plant-life. 



" The Garden at Home. " By H. H. Thomas. 8vo. xii + 276 pp. 

 (Cassell, London, 1912.) 6s. net. 



This is a plentifully illustrated book, some of the pictures being in 

 colours, dealing with gardening in general but especially with the kind 

 of plant to use for certam purposes in garden decoration. It is clothed 

 in a somewhat gaudy cover, and there is perhaps a feeling of unrest 

 about it as a whole that should certainly be absent from the home 

 garden. It is not clear what kind of garden the writer has in mind m 

 the planning of his book, for some of the illustrations show wide 

 expanses of garden ground and other gardens in urban back yards. 

 Many will be able to get hints, but few explicit direction's, as to how 

 to make a home garden, and yet the book seems to be intended 'for the 

 beginner. 



Here and there the author pleads for the use of the newest of 

 plants, and complains that everyone plants the rose * Dorothy Perkins ' 

 for instance. That is true, for what one sees everywhere and finds it 

 gives him pleasure, that he desires to possess himself, but of course 

 later he will wish to gO' further, and in this book he will find helpful 

 hints as to how he may do so and notes on the newer forms that he 

 should possess. 



"Legumes et Fruits de Primeur. " By Ad. Van Den Heede. 

 8vo. 226 pp. (Amat, Paris, 1912.) 3 fr. 



One of the later chapters of this little book gives statistics showing 

 the vast quantities of fruit and vegetables which annually pass from 

 one European country into another and from the New World to the Old. 

 The writer is specially interested in pressing upon French growers 

 that there is no reason why they should have allowed themselves to 

 fall so far behind their Belgian rivals as they have done in supplying 

 the world's dessert tables, and he has put together in a handy form 

 the results of the experience of all the most successful producers of 

 early fruit and vegetables for their benefit. He gives a short history 

 of forcing from the earliest mention of the practice by classical writers, 

 a list O'f all the tropical fruits offered for sale at Covent Garden taken 

 from the Gardeners' Chronicle with, added comments and descriptions, 

 and a further descriptive list of tropical food-producing plants which could 

 be grown in France under glass. Though the author rather cavalierly 

 dismisses the climate of our foggy islands as unsuited to the production 

 of " Primeurs " even in heat, there is much in this book which might 

 be useful to British gardeners; and one experiment, which he describes 



