460 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Modern scientific knowledge has made reclamation a much quicker 
process than it was a generation ago, and remarkable instances are 
given of good financial results obtained by bringing Norfolk heath 
land into cultivation, and thin grass land on the downs into a state of 
high productivity. There are some chapters on similar work in 
Holland and Belgium, the general principle being followed there as 
here of afforesting only such land as is unsuitable for food production. 
The wild bogs of Ireland present a difficult problem, and Prof. Augus- 
tine Henry, in a chapter on the subject, considers it impossible to 
grow timber there at the present day, though sand dunes and cut-over 
bog present a fine field for the growth of maritime pine. The most 
unpromising areas for this work are the pit -banks of the Midlands and 
North of England, but such good results have already been obtained 
that the author states he has no doubt that almost any kind of refuse 
heap might be covered with trees in a few years by a liberal sowing 
of seed of a mixture of species considered most likely to succeed. 
" Tree Wounds and Diseases ; their prevention and treatment, 
with a special chapter on Fruit Trees." By A. D. Webster. 8vo., 
xx + 215 pp. (Williams & Norgate, London, 1916.) 75. 6d. net. 
Perhaps no phase of horticulture is more neglected than the care 
of wounded or diseased trees, and it would scarcely be too much 
to say that were tree-wounds as carefully tended as they ought to 
be the amount of disease among trees would be reduced by more 
than half. 
The author's long and wide experience of the care of trees in 
country and in town, and his knowledge of the causes which bring 
about disease, make this work one of the utmost value to all who 
have trees in their charge. All the methods of pruning, protecting 
wounds, encouraging healing, supporting branches liable to trouble 
or destruction, renovating old trees and so on, are fully dealt with, as 
well as the fungi and insects which are so frequently the agents of 
destruction, and the various modes of ill-treatment and mismanage- 
ment which lay them open to attack. 
It is a book which we can cordially and confidently commend to 
those who have a love for trees, and wish to treat them as they ought 
to be treated. 
" South African Botany." By F. W. Storey and K. M. Wright. 
With 6 plates in colour and 113 text figures. 8vo., 220 pp. (Longmans, 
London, 1916.) 4s. 6d. 
This book is written as suitable for the upper classes of the secon- 
dary schools, and is mainly morphological, the first seven chapters 
dealing with plant-structures, the eighth with pollination and fer- 
tilization, the ninth on plant physiology, and the tenth on classifica- 
tion, in which types of sixteen natural orders are described, with 
illustrations. Several foreign plants are introduced, but the reader 
is not informed on that point. 
