PLANT LIFE IN lab BRITISH ISLES.
Plant Life in the British Isles. By A. R. Horwood. Illustrated with 73 Photographs. (J. and A. Churchill. 6s. 6d. net.)—This little book is an introduction to the study of British flowering plants on rather unusual lines. Mr. Horwood feels that structure and systematic work appeal less to the beginner than what is called ecology, or habits and life history. He takes types of thirty order& out of the hundred orders of Angiosperms in theBritish Isles, and explains why they have become what they are. He dwells on adapta- tions. He turns the reader's attention to the mechanism of pollination and seed dispersal. Writing in a quite popular
fashion, but using technical terms which are explained in a glossary, he gives the "natural history" of the plant. His book may serve as a stepping-stone to Kerner and Oliver's, Used with a systematic Flora, it is full of suggestive ideas. There is a bibliography which would have been more useful had it told a very little more. The photographs from life are clearly printed and well chosen, but sometimes too small to show more than the habit of the plant and where it grows. This introductory volume of common types is to be followed by two others dealing with the rarer orders.
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