For Our Delight
The Floral Year. By L. J. F. Brimble. (Macmillan. 30s.) THIS book is remarkable because its effect on the reader is highly emotional, though it consists almost entirely of facts, and vastly informative facts. The author heads it by quoting an exquisite poem by Sylvia Lynd whicti begins, "I long to sec the flowers again,
The flowers whose names I scarce remember, Stretching their pied and painted chain From February to November."
It is precisely his purpose to unwind that "pied and painted chain," to stretch it out to cover another month at each end, and to see that the reader, or browser (for this is a permanent bedside book), shall have no further excuse for "scarce remembering" not only the names of the flowers, but also their habits, formation, botanical history, setting and idosyncrasies.
Mr. Brimble begins at once with a method of exposition that both surprises the reader and sets his imagination to work. He chooses his illustrations and examples with cunning. For instance, in making his preliminary statement that the vegetable world is first divided into three classes, tree, shrub and herb (from a structural point of view), he gives the apple, the wild rose and the strawberry. But these are three members of the same family, the roseaceae. This begins the method of cross reference and subtle interweaving of groups, kinds, affinities and all the rest, by which method alone we can begin to make a pattern out of the welter of natural wealth that ceaselessly springs out of the soil all the year round, to the confusion of country-lovers and, I suspect, of botanists, too.
The book is divided into ten parts, of which the first is introductory and given to first principles. But the signposts arc gaily painted, and the poets are called in at once to do most of the sign-writing. The last part telescopes the period from September to December, and deals therefore with seed-time and harvest and the annual transformation of the deciduous plants, contrasting them with the evergreens which come into prominence during that time. The other eight parts deal each with one of the remaining eight months of the year. By far the largest of these is that concerned with the month of June, the crown of the seasons, when the days tire long, but not
long enough for us to see, =ell, hear and absorb all the teeming life of high summer. We try in vain to catch the Niagara in our gill pots, and every night we go to bed exhausted, drowsy with a kind of joyous despair. Shall we ever learn about it all ? The question falls dead from our lips, for we know the answer before- hand. But the humility of our approach is all that matters. So long as we look our "last on all things lovely," as de la Mare urges us, we shall never grow callous before the miracle of the Burning Bush.
It is impossible to review this book in the usual way, for it contains so much that one suspects it to be the outcome of a lifetime's pre- occupation with the goings-on of nature. The reader plunges into it, and at once has a sense of being "rolled round in earth's diurnal course," and reduced to a seeing eye and a wondering mind, united by a latent mood of worship. What is so valuable in the book is its patient guidance to some sort of ordered contemplation of the scene. Mr. Brimble has a wide range of reference, not only in the scientific approaches but also in his literary illustrations and loving side- lights. It is these last that give the book its atmosphere, draping the bony contours of fact with an emotional warmth in which the reader can bask luxuriously.
Perhaps the unbotanical person will get the most surprises from these pages. For example, I have learned that corn salad, which I always grow because of its addition of a delicate mealy flavour to the salad, is a valerian (valerianella ()Warta), and that the general name of all-heal is indicative a its value as a vegetable. Mr. Brimble, in writing about the elder tree, might have mentioned that its flowers provide a delicious muscat flavouring to preserveS, such as gooseberry jelly. However, he more than makes up for this omission by telling me that the wild rose originated in a drop of perspiration from the brow of Mohammed, and that eglantine is properly the sweet briar and not the wild or dog rose. • This pins it down securely, and gets rid of the confusion about that wondrous name, to which Milton added by fastening it to the honeysuckle. But I degenerate into gossip about this delightful work ; so I will close with a reference to its illustrations, which consist of hundreds of useful photographs, many drawings and a number of flower plates in colour.
RICIIARD CHURCH.
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