BOOK
REVIEW
RECENTLY there has been published by Michael Joseph and the Ebury Press T H E CONCISE BRITISH FLORA IN COLOUR by W Keble J Martin.
In the last few years so many books of this sort have been published that to take a useful place this one needs to be very good indeed. T h e general layout is very attractive, so that anyone handling the book is likely to want to own it. T h e coloured plates which have been the result of sixty years of collection, drawing, and re-drawing make delightful pages and light coloured flowers have been shown against a green background, a devise which shows them up very satisfactorily. Naming of specimens has been brought very carefully right up to date and in the plates is in Latin, a most valuable aid to help to populanse scientific names ; an admirable innovation. If one wants to use the book for the identification of an unknown flower, lt is not so satisfactory unless one has a pretty good idea at least of the family to which the specimen belongs. T h e reduction in size of the original drawings made necessary in publication has had the result of masking those smaller details necessary for the identification of some of the more difficult species. Colour reproduction of the mauve flowers is weak. It may seem churlish to criticise at all a book which provides so much for 35/-. D.J.M.