KE17EJVS AND EXCHANGES 
9 ‘ 
by the snowflakes, but beyond in the meadows there are still 
more flowers. In truth, the memory of the wayside bank is in 
danger of being effaced by the profusion and beauty of these 
riverside blossoms. 
Here the yellow cowslips, gently quivering in the breeze, 
are diffusing their delicate fragrance, thereby adding a unit to 
the delightfully sweet country smell which permeates the warm 
air of springtime. Delicately tinted, lilac cuckoo-flowers are in 
another spot, and with them a few scattered “ turkey caps,” as 
children term the chequered fritillaries. 
Under shelter of a hedge a few blue hyacinths remain, 
running to seed for the most part, to be sure, but still making a 
bright patch of colour. 
The marsh marigolds, growing in the ditches and runnels 
which intersect the fields, likewise passed the full height of their 
beauty a week or more ago, but the sepals which at close 
(juarters appear somewhat old and worn still look rich and 
golden when seen from a short distance. 
From both banks the sedge birds pour forth their chattering 
melody, and a chaffinch is monotonously repeating his short 
song from the elevated position of a solitary riverside oak. 
Some peewits cry high in the air, where they may be seen 
carrying out their rough-and-tumble evolutions ; and sweetest of 
all, from a distant coppice just where the ground begins to rise, 
the clear notes of a nightingale are distinctly audible. 
The creatures by the river-side are as joyous as those whose 
dwellings are near the lanes and highways. All, too, seem to 
bear the same message to the heart. 
■\. H. Bastin. 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
On Buds a?id Stipules. By the Right Hon. Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., 
F. R.S. With 4 coloured plate.s and 340 figures in the text. Kegan Paul, 
Trench, Triibner, and Co. (International Scientific Series. ) Price 5s. 
Popular science in the best sense of the term, that is, science intelligible to the 
general reader, is always presented to us by the International Scientific Series. 
The volumes in this collection are the work of specialists, chosen without regard 
to nationality, and such is the division of labour in modern science that, although 
there are several cases in which two books are from the same pen. Sir John 
Lubbock is the only writer whose versatility is so great that no less than four 
volumes of the series are by him. In addition to the present work, these deal 
with such divers subjects as Ants, Bees and Wasps, the Senses, Instincts, and 
Intelligence of Animals, and Seedlings, and they rank among the most popular 
volumes of the series. As Selbornians all these works of our President are of 
peculiar interest to us, embodying as they do records of systematic observation 
which are of just such a kind as those made by our great master Gilbert White 
himself. Buds and stipules are familiar objects to all of us, especially at this time 
of year ; but many of us have probably never tried to determine the precise nature 
of the scales in any particular winter-bud or to answer Vaucher’s question as to 
the reason for the presence or absence of stipules. The multitudinous observa- 
tions recorded by our President can in almost all cases be readily verified or added 
