52 
NATURE NOTES 
whence we had a fine view of Launceston, the Tamar River, 
and Bass’s Straits. Around us pools of water were plentiful, 
mountain-artichokes (composites modified by climate to form 
close, compact, rounded masses) grew here and there, and a cat- 
head fern [Aspidinm aculeatum), was noted among the rocks near 
the cairn. 
On the homeward way a Pink-breasted Robin sat on a small 
tree close to the track for our inspection, while a Thickhead flew 
rapidly across the bush road ; several male Yellow-breasted 
Thickheads in grand plumage, were dotted about the stumps in 
a paddock, while the Wood-swallow (Artamus sordidus), with 
smooth sailing flight, was plentiful among the timbered foot-hills. 
Many roadside shrubs were beautified by masses of the 
climbing Purple-berry (Billardiera scandens), which sends forth 
in the flowering season long, greenish-yellow bells, succeeded in 
autumn by large oblong berries of a purplish blue. 
West Devonport, H. Stuart Dove. 
Tasmania. 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
South African Flowering Plants for the Use of Beginners, Students and 
Teachers. By Rev. Professor G. Henslovv, M.A., F.L.S. Long- 
mans. Price ss. 
It is now a good many years ago since Professor Daniel Oliver drew 
up from the manuscripts of Professor J. S. Henslow those " Lessons 
in Elementary Botany ” which have provided several generations of 
English beginners with one of the best possible introductions to the 
study of flowering plants. Professor Oliver subsequently adapted 
the work for students in India, and now Professor G. Henslow has done 
for South Africa what his father and Professor Oliver did for England 
and India. Professor Henslow is well known to our Members as a Vice- 
President and as a contributor to Nature Notes, and to the botanical 
world in general as the author of several most suggestive if controversial 
works ; but his charmingly simple description of a few types in Botany 
for f Beginners, and his lucid directions in How to Study Wild Flowers, 
have already sliown him a master in the difficult art of elementary expo- 
sition. Five-sixths of the present work is devoted to the systematic 
description ofjthe cliief Natural Orders of South African flowering plants, 
inTIwhich the only point to which we can take exception is the placing 
the Gymnosperma', the Pine and Yellow-wood and the Kaffir-bread 
families, between the Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons. The whole 
work is so excellently adapted to its i)urpose that we cannot doubt its 
speedy and general accejitance in the schools of South Africa, so that 
we do not hesitate to express our gratitude to the author by asking for 
favours to come in the shape of an expansion in the next edition of the 
excellent chapters on the stems and foliage of plants characteristic of 
dry regions, and on the origin of the VeUl and Karroo plants. As it 
is, floral characters seem rather too prominent, and we should like to 
hear more of the ecology of the South African flora. The book has the 
