Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/257

 ELEMENTS OF BOTANY. 235 the author adds particulars of the heights of the localities also in Norwegian feet. To show his treatment of the species I will take Bammculus acris L. (as a common British species) ; for this he gives some 472 separate localities. As a rarer species Linncea borealis, with 303 separate localities ; and as a rare one Phyllodoce carulea, with 277 separate localities. The only (in Mr. Watson's work) one we can compare with these is Ranunculus acris, for which, in the whole of England and Scotland, he gives 107 localities, or centres. With the localities. Dr. Norman gives a large amount of notes of various kinds — of the flowering (expressed thus " ^/,j 83 "), &c. Thus are treated the species (it should be here remarked that he has selected In the second part he takes the same species, and treats them in a condensed manner (with paginal references to the first part) from the standpoints of horizontal distribution ; vertical distribution ; topographical statistics; characters of environment; flowering, as to time, and length of time in bloom, size, &c., of flowers; and remarks. I suppose it would not be far wrong to take these parts as representing about half the Flora (in European Floras the medium part is generally the Compositae) ; if so, it means that some 2400 pages will be required to represent the plants selected from the Norwegian Arctic Flora. We certainly have nothing that can be compared with this work in completeness as to localities. I doubt much whether, if all the local Floras of Britain could be collated, there would then be such a collection of habitats for the rarer plants — certainly not for the_ common ones, as our Floras often merely say "in all the districts," or, ''common over the whole county," both generally misleading. But Dr. Norman treats the common species as exactly as the rare ones, and it may be doubted whether there is another work in existence that can show such fulness of detail. The map shows the twenty-five districts into which the author has divided Arctic Norway; it would have been better to have shown the district boundaries in red, as, the map being deeply shaded with contour lines, it is not easy at a glance to follow the dotted lines. Arthur Bennett. Elements of Botany. By J. Y. Bergen, A.M. Ginn, Boston, U.S.A. 1896. 8vo, pp. viii, 275, 57 ; with 212 figs. This little work is an expansion of notes prepared for a half- year course in botany at the Boston English High School. It is one of the best of its kind we remember to have seen, and in Boston and elsewhere in the United States will doubtless be welcomed by teachers of botany, to whom we can recommend it as an accurate and well-arranged guide for their students. But it falls under the heading " Foreign," from the point of view of this Journal. While it is eminently of advantage to cite as illustrations, and use for
 * special plants") from Ranunculus glacialis L. to Pyrola unijiora L.