A BOOK FOB BOTANISTS. 17 1 
is not good to eat. Boys and girls do not always remember this 
when they eat nuts. 
Squirrels are very lively, active, and playful when they know 
they are safe from enemies, and they jump from bough to bough, 
and chase each other, and look as if they were having fine 
games. They are so quick that they can spring out of the 
way of a shot when warned only by the flash of the gun ; but 
they are weak, timid little things, easily frightened, and not 
easily tamed. Our squirrel seems hardly to trust us yet, though 
he has had nothing but kindness, and has never been frightened 
or roughly handled. He understood, though, I think, that we 
were giving him friendly help as soon as I began with my 
scissors upon his nails, for he held them still, and stopped all 
his struggles. On each fore-foot are four nails, and on each 
hind-foot are five. How many altogether ? 
I cut the tip of every one just to make it blunt so that it 
should not catch in the wires of the cage, or in the flannel 
and cotton-wool, which serve as blankets and counterpane. 
The poor thing has been quite unhappy lately, caught over 
and over again by its long sharp claws. Each nail is round 
like a sickle, and is used for climbing and clinging, so that it 
would not do to cut off more than the tiniest bit of the tip. 
Suppose now we finish with Cowper’s description of a squirrel. 
And if you like, you can learn it by heart. 
“ Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm, 
That age or injury has hollowed deep, 
Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves, 
He has outslept the winter, ventures forth 
To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun, 
The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play, 
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, 
Ascends the neighbouring birch ; there whisks his brush, 
And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud, 
With all the prettiness of feigned alarm, 
And anger insignificantly fierce.” 
Elizabeth Martyn. 
A BOOK FOR BOTANISTS. 
Biographical Index of British and Irish Botanists , by James Britten, F. L.S., 
and G. S. Boulger, F.L.S. [West, Newman and Co., 54, Flatton Garden, E.C. 
Price 6s. ; by subscription 3s. gd.] 
The announcement that this most interesting and useful work, which has been 
published in the numbers of the Journal of Botany for the last three years, is to 
be issued in book form, gives us an opportunity of expressing our satisfaction that 
there are still some botanists left amongst us who prefer to do good work on their own 
account rather than to borrow everything secondhand from the Germans. The chief 
offenders in this respect are the Oxford Clarendon Press, who devote a large part 
of their catalogue to a list of ponderous translated volumes on botany with not one 
book by an English botanist, as if they were desirous by the contrast to throw into 
prominent relief the poverty in literary production of the Oxford School of Botany. 
Only last year they published without editing or addition, the fifteen year old History 
of Botany by Sachs, which is indeed a masterly and illuminative sketch from the 
