NATURE NOTES 
2 14 
length. Of the illustrations, numbering nearly three hundred, none are more 
beautiful than those reproduced from Wyville Thomson’s “ Depths of the Sea,” 
one of which we are permitted by Messrs. Macmillan to reproduce. As may 
have been gathered from this necessarily brief notice, though it appeals less than 
some other volumes to the mere collector, this portion of the work yields to 
none in its zoological importance. 
Books and Portraits illustrating the History of Plant Classification exhibited in 
the Department of Botany. British Museum (Natural History). Special 
Guides: No. 2. Price 4d. 
The exhibition of books and portraits illustrative of the history of systematic 
Botany in the Botanical Department, is a most interesting special supplement t o 
that dealing with Natural History in general, on the ground floor of the same 
Museum ; and it was most desirabie that a guide-book should be issued explain- 
ing the series to the general public. Dr. Rendle’s article in a recent issue of the 
Journal of Botany afforded an excellent basis for such a guide, and we cannot 
help thinking that this present publication is too much a reprint of the labels on 
the books. Thus the names of Morison, Linnteus, De Candolle and Brown, each 
occur twice, in large type, sometimes on one page, and we are startled by the 
statement opposite an obviously recent uncoloured reproduction of Ehret’s 
plate illus'rating the Sexual System, that “this is the original.” The portrait of 
Robert Brown alone is well worth the price of the pamphlet ; but that of 
Linnaeus is less successfully reproduced, whilst the one chosen is not the most 
pleasing representation of Ray. Just at the time when this little book was in 
preparation, we were examining Roubiliac’s bust of the great Essex naturalist in 
the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and remarking how feeble an impres- 
sion of that w r ork of art was given by the cast at the Linnaean Society’s rooms, and 
what a much better portrait than any yet published could be made from the 
original. 
7 he Romance of Plant Life. By G. F. Scott Elliot. With 34 illustrations. 
Seeley and Co. Price 5s. 
Undoubtedly there is much of romance underlying the dry details of science, 
and presumably it is well to attract the young to the careful and systematic study 
of Nature by means of unsystematic gleanings of her more romantic aspects. The 
danger in such popular science is that, falling into the hands of untrained, 
uncritical men of letters, it may cease altogether to be scientific by failing to be 
accurate. There is, however, no such danger with Mr. Scott Elliot. He is 
desultory, gossipy, we might almost say, but full of miscellaneous information, 
entertainingly imparted ; but he knows his subject ; his scientific names are 
accurate ; he quotes references, and he has a good index. Of the very varied 
but excellent illustrations we have, by Messrs. Seeley’s permission, chosen for 
reproduction here the title-page of Parkinson’s Paradisus, near the centre of 
which, just above the head of Adam, appears the Barometz or Scythian Lamb, 
the centre of one of the most romantic stories of the plant-w'orld. 
The Romance of Animal Arts and Crafts. By II. Coupin and John Lea. With 
27 illustrations. Seeley' and Co. Price 5s. 
The authors of a book on the arts and crafts of animals have a somewhat 
difficult task before them, since they inevitably provoke comparison with that 
favourite of our own boyhood, Mr. J. G. Wood. So many and so startling are 
the advances made in our knowledge of the habits of animals of late years that 
the authors of this work have succeeded in presenting us with an exciting and 
mostly novel story. It is classified not by the structure, but by the habits of the 
animals, miners, masons, mound-builders, carpenters, trappers, spinners, raft- 
makers, potters and weavers, being dealt with in turn. Of the illustrations, 
the frontispiece, which we are permitted to reproduce, showing Bet/ongia pencil- 
la/a, the Brush-tailed Rat-kangaroo building its nest, is, we think, the best. 
