io8 
Review. 
will come, perhaps, as the next best thing, i.e., if it is accessible, 
for the price (£2 2s. per volume) must greatly limit its circulation, 
and one cannot imagine such a work paying its way. 
By means of this book, replete with clear descriptions, lavish 
of beautiful photographs, splendid with paintings of flowers, and 
(for the student) well-furnished with genera-keys, the wondrous 
flora of the Cape (using the term in its widest sense) is brought 
one stage nearer to the stay-at-home botanists of Europe, and in 
a way which has never been equalled before. 
One further point. The reviewer had occasion to mention 
recently at the Linnean Society that many of the Cape plants in 
the greenhouses at Kew had grown, owing to the over-moist and 
under-illuminated conditions, almost out of all recognition to one 
who knows them in their native haunts ; robust plants become 
drawn, flaggy and often utterly grotesque. Dr. Marloth refers to 
this same phenomenon in his work : “ Protea cynaroides was seen 
by us in flower at Kew in May, 1911, but the shoots were thin and 
slender, over ten feet high and tied up against a trellis, not stout 
and robust as on the wild plant.” Here, then, we have one more 
reason for welcoming this unique work ; it will help to save home- 
botanists from the misleading ideas created from the contemplation 
of cultivated Cape plants in Europe ! 
1 The leaf, in the living plant, is not split up into ribbons, as is here 
portrayed. 
w.c.w. 
