130 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



to have been compiled with care, the general body of the book, which 

 records an enormous amount of work, calls for no special mention. 

 Mosses and Hepatics are included, but not Fungi or Algae. Mr. A. W. 

 Preston contributes a chapter on "Climate," Mr. L. F. Newman one 

 on "Soils," and Mr. W. H. Burrell gives a particularly interesting 

 account of the physiography of the county and the distribution of 

 plants in it. 



" Phytogeographic Survey of North America." By J. W. Harsh- 

 berger. 780 pp., i map, 18 plates, and 32 figs. (Engelmann, Leipzig, 

 1911.) Price £2 I2S. 



This volume of the memoirs, " Vegetation der Erde," is written 

 in English. It gives a summary of the historical development of 

 Botany in North America, an account of the topography and climate, 

 and a discussion of the geological evolution of the flora. The main 

 thesis is a description of the regions of vegetation, from the Arctic 

 through the various temperate zones to the tropical regions of Panama 

 and the West Indies. In spite of almost unwieldy size, the memoir 

 is a severe condensation of the immense amount of work done on 

 regional plant geography in America ; the bibliography of titles 

 alone extends to 46 pages. Many American species are referred to 

 and are easily found in the index ; little detail is given on fioristic 

 characters, but the interest to horticulturists lies in the description 

 of the type of vegetation to which each species belongs. As North 

 America extends through many kinds of cHmate from Arctic to tropi- 

 cal and from its Atlantic coasts over the Rockies to the characteristic 

 Pacific region, the number of plant formations dealt with is bewildering, 

 but the author has carefully delimited the more extensive types 

 of vegetation and has thus presented them in a form not hitherto 

 attempted. The phytogeographic areas are shown on a coloured 

 map, and the photographs reproduced as plates or fig-ures convey 

 a good impression of characteristic plants in their surroundings. 



