38 
REVIEWS 
beetroot and other domestic vegetables, about which students are liable to 
ask awkward questions. In the descriptions of the Natural Orders, a special 
feature is made of longitudinal sections of flowers, which convey much more 
to young students than the usual ground-plan floral diagram. 
E. L. STEPHENS. 
THE FERNS OF SOUTH AFRICA. By Thomas R. Sim. 2nd Edition. 
Cambridge University Press. 1915. 
When the history of South African Botany comes to be written, the name 
of T. R. Sim will find an honoured place therein. His Forests and Forest 
Flora of Cape Colony, Forest Flora and Forest Resources of Portuguese 
E. Africa, Ferns of S. Africa, to mention only two or three of his numerous 
works, leave us deeply impressed by his wonderful energy and ability, and 
now, by the publication of a second edition of his Ferns, he has increased the 
debt which botanical science in S. Africa owes him. 
The introductory chapters possess an agreeable freshness of outlook and 
contain all that is necessary in a systematic work of this description, without 
entering into too great morphological detail. The sections dealing with the 
cultivation of S. African Ferns and the natural home of the Ferns should 
make the book appeal to a wider circle of readers. 
The arrangement and nomenclature followed is mainly that of Carl 
Christensen’s Index Filicum, but Bower’s arrangement is adopted for the 
cohorts of Pteridophyta not dealt with by Christensen. It must be admitted 
that, in spite of the importance of recent researches by Bower and others, we 
are still a long Avay from a truly natural scheme of classification and that 
adopted by Mr Sim is probably the most serviceable yet devised. The 
descriptions of the species occupy the main portion of the book, and for 
this section we have nothing but praise. Exceptionally full reference is 
made to previous writers, a task in itself of no small magnitude, especially 
for one working in S. Africa ; in fact, the paragraphs in which the historical 
matter is discussed are not the least valuable in the work. For all the 
critical species, however, Sim prefers to trust his own judgment and, as he 
states in the preface, he has found occasion in a good many cases to differ from 
Kuhn, mostly regarding species originated by Pappe and Rawson. The 
whole of the descriptions, as well as the figures, are Sim’s own, taken from 
live specimens where these were obtainable, or from dried specimens in his 
own herbarium or in some of the leading Cape herbaria. Every. species is 
figured and the drawings are admirable examples of scientific clearness and 
accuracy. 
