The Stories of the Trees. By Mrs. J. Miller Maxwell.
(D. Douglas, Edinburgh. 3s. 6d. net.)—Mrs. Maxwell gives descrip- tions ef seventeen trees, felices three of them, the pear, the apple, and the mulberry, with a fourth, if the sweet chestnut is to be reckoned, for it is not to us what it is to the Southerner. The fruit, indeed, is never of the best quality. These descriptions have, perhaps, a little too much ornament about them. Some- times we are inclined to wish that the practical element had been a little snore developed. It might have been as well, for instance, in speaking of the sweet chestnut aforesaid, to tell us something of the uses to which it is put. It has of late years superseded, in a large measure, the ash for hop-poles, being itself threatened by new methods of "poling" the hop gardens. Mrs. Maxwell doubts whether it is an ancient tree in this country. It is not unlikely that it dates from the Roman occupation. Our author borrows from Pliny a notion that the apple was sometimes grafted from the mulberry, and got thence a peculiarly ruddy flesh. Is this possible ? The ancients, notably Virgil, have some marvellous stories of grafting.
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