tree.

On the left-hand side of the trunk of the tree, in the first illustration accompanying this article, where a limb has been broken away, one of these plants may be seen. Not only do roots descend, but some of them throw themselves around the tree, a

FIG. 2.

The Clusia firmly established and lashed to the supporting tree. feature clearly shown in the same illustration. The new tree is small as compared with its foster-parent, but look at the second and third illustrations which depict more advanced stages of the tragedy. In the former note how large have become the trunklike roots and how many other roots have surrounded the trunk of

the foster-tree like great tentacles which are slowly but surely strangling it. It is but a short step now to the end, for soon the tree, which gave support and a home to the baby plant, loses its life, finally going into decay and falling away, leaving its one-time epiphytic guest master of the situation.

FIG. 3.

A Clusia from Jamaica. (Photograph loaned by Dr. M. A. Howe.)

This is the tragedy as I saw it enacted many times in the forests of Haïti, where two of the photographs were taken from which the illustrations were made. The scene is laid on the north side of the island, about eighteen miles to the west of Cap Haïtien,

and not far from the little village of Port Margot. It is not necessary that you visit that particular locality, for nearly anywhere in a tropical forest you may see the same thing taking place. In this instance the ungrateful plant was Clusia, but there are other plants which gain their ends in the same way.

*

in the English-speaking portions of the West

No wonder that

Indies this plant

has received the name of the "Scotch attorney," for when it once obtains a hold it never lets go while there is anything to be gained.

NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN.

GEORGE V. NASH.

text.

REVIEWS

"Gray's Manual," Seventh Edition †

The long anticipated seventh edition of " Gray's Manual" has appeared, and proves to be an attractive and carefully prepared work of 926 pages, quite copiously illustrated with small but generally clear and accurate figures scattered throughout the The arrangement followed is that of Engler & Prantl, and the plan of prefacing the treatment of the species in a genus with a specific key is generally adopted. The authors, or editors as they designate themselves, Professors B. L. Robinson and M. L. Fernald, of Harvard University, are to be cordially and sincerely congratulated on the successful termination of their work, which not only exhibits on every page the learning for which the authors are so well known, but shows every evidence of painstaking care and an evident desire to embody the latest researches

*The last report of the Missouri Botanical Garden has an illustrated paper on "The Florida Strangling Figs" by Dr. Ernst A. Bessey. Two species of Ficus are described; one (F. aurea) having the curious "habit of beginning its growth as an epiphyte and later becoming terrestrial by sending down numerous slender roots which eventually thicken and fuse together, finally wholly surrounding and strangling the host." The seeds of the same species require light in order to germinate; this peculiarity is no doubt related to its epiphytic habit. EDITOR.

-

Illustrated). A Handbook

† Gray's New Manual of Botany (Seventh Edition of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Central and Northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. Rearranged and extensively revised by Benjamin Lincoln Robinson and Merritt Lyndon Fernald. Pp. 926. f. 1-1036. American Book Company, New York, 1908. $2.50. [Issued September 18.]

in the flora of the region covered. The belief which has prevailed in botanical circles in the past, whether rightly or wrongly, that propositions put forward by others would not be investigated solely on their merits by the Harvard botanists—a belief which the sixth edition of Gray's Manual unfortunately did so much to foster will now happily have to disappear and be but a memory

of the days that were.

By the above statements the writer does not, of course, mean that there are not many features in this edition of "Gray's Manual" open to criticism and strong differences of opinion, and no one will probably admit this more readily than the learned authors themselves. The first and probably the most obvious question, which will occur to any one after a careful perusal of this work, is why it is called " Gray's Manual." One can understand that as a commercial proposition it may have been deemed advisable to conserve the value of the advertising given to Gray's works in the past. Apart from this, however, there is so little left of the text of the old Gray's Manual, and the entire arrangement, nomenclature, style, type, and even cover of the book, have been so radically and fundamentally changed, that it seems to the writer a misuse of terms to speak of this work as a new edition of Gray's Manual. Indeed, so vast are the changes that the writer feels called upon to offer his condolences to those Bostonians of the old school for whom even the phraseology of the former editions of Gray's Manual has been almost sacred. In the present work they will find so much that is new that he is almost afraid they will be compelled to fall back on Dr. Britton's Manual to be again on familiar ground! To be serious, however, the authors are doing themselves an injustice in not calling the work what it really is. It is so nearly a new work that in accuracy it should be called "Robinson & Fernald's Manual." If the authors are too modest for this, calling it "Britton's Manual Harvard Edition," would be more accurate than using the name which has been given, as in every respect it much more resembles Dr. Britton's work than it does Dr. Gray's.

In matters of nomenclature, the work unfortunately follows the arbitrary and unjust Vienna Code, not because the learned

authors believe in that code, but because they hope to keep American botany from an alleged "provincialism" in not following it. Americans in general, and Bostonians in particular, have in times past shown pronounced evidences of "provincialism" when dealing with certain European ideas of right and wrong, and the writer for one hopes that a similar "provincialism" will be shown in dealing with the Vienna Code. To select arbitrarily several hundred generic names as that Code does, and refuse to recognize them, although entitled to recognition under every rule of right and justice, is to the writer one of the most indefensible of propositions. The writer, of course, knows that the rule referred to is not one for which the authors of the work under review are responsible. He only hopes that, with the liberal mind they have shown in dealing with other questions, they will in the future join other American botanists in repudiating it.

Outside of the changes made necessary by recent discoveries, a very large percentage of the differences between this manual and other manuals of recent years, arises from this arbitrary rejection of certain generic names. The rejection of the rule "once a synonym, always a synonym" accounts for a small percentage of the differences, and the remaining arise almost entirely from what might be called a "conservative" generic treatment. Indeed, the generic treatment is rather disappointing. The authors have not given us their own ideas, as they have in the case of species, but have followed too closely the ideas of others. The same liberal treatment which the authors have applied to species. would, I am sure, produce different results from those here given, when applied to genera.

While, as heretofore stated, the plan has generally been adopted of prefacing the treatment of species in a genus with a specific key, yet in many cases the plan of scattering a key through the specific descriptions has been followed. The result is a lack of uniformity, which at times is disconcerting. This matter, however, is of minor importance and detracts but little from the merits of the work.

It

So much, then, for the general features of this manual. now remains for the reviewer to give a statement of the impressions produced on him by various portions of the work.