6 
NATURE NOTES 
mantelpiece. He flew at it and collided with a crash ; this he 
did two or three times, and after having all the breath knocked 
out of his body, desisted, and regarded his adversary with a 
woeful eye, wondering, no doubt, upon the hardness of the 
knocks he had received from that stiff and still member of his 
tribe. In the future the plaster bird was given a wide berth. 
At last the frost came to an end and robin’s visits to my table 
became less frequent, but I always saw him diligently searching 
the garden for insects, stopping at intervals to give his sweet 
song. In the early spring another robin appeared in the garden, 
in company with red robin, who was now bent upon matri- 
monial matters. He was so busy he had no time to visit me. 
They built their nest in the thick ivy-clad wall just above my 
window. In this Mrs. Red Robin laid five beautiful little eggs 
and devoted herself to the hatching of her brood, assisted by her 
loving mate. It was a proud and happy pair that allowed me to 
look in their nest one morning and see lying there five naked 
little robins. Now came the hardest task of all, that of supplying 
the wants of their chicks. All five were, however, successfully 
reared and left the nest. Robin and his mate continued with 
me some time afterwards, but left at last. There is no doubt, 
however, that he will return again to share his meals with me, 
remembering the kindness he had received at my hands, for 
which he was truly thankful. L G Corner. 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
Notes on the Life History of British Flowering Plants. By the Right Hon. 
Lord Avebury. Macmillan and Co. Price 15s. net. 
We remember that, in the preface to the first edition of the Student's Flora, 
Sir Joseph Hooker expressed a hope that some day the purely anatomical dis- 
tinctions which find a place in such works might be supplemented by notes on the 
life-history of the plants. This want he has himself, to some slight extent, 
supplied in later editions by the addition of such brief characterisations as “ wind- 
fertilised, self-fertilised, protogynons,” & c. ; but it has been left to our President 
to fill the hiatus in the literature of British botany more completely by the present 
volume. It forms a handsome library volume of some 450 pages, with more than 
350 illustrations in the text (two of which we are permitted to reproduce here), 
and has a glossary of the technical terms employed. Though it is a pleasure to 
turn over its thick pages and to read its iarge type, we hope soon to see it 
accessible to a larger public in a cheaper edition, and we are greedily anxious for 
the additional detail which the author could give us by the use of smaller type. 
After a brief but most interesting introduction, the chief species in our flora are 
treated in systematic order, the arrangement and nomenclature followed being 
that rendered familiar by Bentham’s Handbook. There is not a great deal in the 
volume that will be new to diligent students of botanical literature, and especially 
of the author’s own previous botanical works — “ British Wild Flowers considered 
in relation to Insects “ Flowers , Fruits, and Leaves," “ Seedlings ,” and “ Buds 
and Stipules" ; but even the substance of his remarks at the Cambridge meeting 
of the British Association in 1904 is given, and these notes have never before 
been accessible in a systematic arrangement. They refer mainly to seedlings, 
buds, insect-fertilisation, and seed-dispersal, so that there are many points on 
which we want more information. The histology of the stem, for instance, in 
climbers, such as Clematis and Bryonia, or in aquatic plants, and the root- 
