Review. 
3° 
REVIEW. 
FLOWERING PLANTS OF THE RIVIERA: 
A DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF 1800 OF THE MORE 
INTERESTING SPECIES. 
By H. Stuart Thompson, F.L.S. With an Introduction on Riviera 
Vegetation, by A. G.Tansley, M.A. London (Longmans, Green &Co.), 
1914, pp. xxviii and 249, 32 plates (24 coloured, 8 photographic). 
Price 10/6 net. 
mHIS book fills a much felt gap in the literature available to the 
tourist in a region where even the least observant cannot fail 
to be struck with the great variety and brilliant colouration of the 
wild flowers. 
Few persons could have been more competent to deal with the 
task of providing a simple and compact account of this very large 
flora than Mr. Stuart Thompson, who has had long personal 
acquaintance with the region and whose previous volumes on Alpine 
Plants and Subalpine Plants have ably demonstrated his powers of 
writing a popular yet scientific flora. 
The flora is arranged on the system of Bentham and Hooker, 
which only departs in minor points from that generally used in 
French floras. The actual descriptive part is preceded by a 
compact and useful synopsis of the families in which the essential 
distinguishing characters are given in a few lines. Each family also 
is in its turn provided with a synoptic table of the tribes and genera, 
and though no keys to the species are given the descriptions are 
short and clear and in most cases should present no difficulty. The 
terms used are those in general use in all English floras, while for 
the beginner a full and clear glossary of terms is given. Further 
help is furnished in identification by the coloured plates of a large 
number of species. These plates are from drawings by Mr. Clarence 
Bicknell and form a valuable addition to the work. They should 
add greatly to its popularity with the general public. The figures 
on the plates in one or two cases lose something of their artistic 
merit from being a little too close to the edge of the paper. Also 
the plates in many cases are inconveniently far from the descriptions 
of the plants illustrated. 
The book, as its title indicates, does not profess to be an 
exhaustive flora, but perhaps, from the point of view of the botanist, 
one may be forgiven for feeling a slight regret that, while the 
descriptions given are so excellent, a rather closer approach to 
completeness has not been attained. This feeling of incompleteness 
is especially noticeable in the case of some of the larger genera and 
families, under which many species are often simply mentioned by 
