(1) Lichens (2) A Handbook of the British Lichens

Abstract

(1) FOR many years botanists have been without a guide to the large mass of facts that have been added year by year to our knowledge of lichens. Miss A. Lorrain Smith has therefore done a good work in compiling a very comprehensive handbook on this group of plants. The growth of our manufacturing and even our garden cities proves fatal to all except a few insignificant lichens. They are driven away to those far-off parts of the country where the air is still fresh and pure. This circumstance very possibly, but the absence of any comprehensive handbook on, and guide to, the lichens certainly, is a reason why so little interest is taken in this group. Yet, ecologically, it is one of the most interesting groups. Lichens grow on the out skirts of vegetation, as pioneers of the plant world; preparing the way for moss, fern and flowering plant. They are most intimately in touch with the substratum in its virgin condition. Few ecologists, however, properly consider lichens. Anatomically, the lichen thallus very directly reflects the nature of the substratum. A great deal, however, still remains to be done in this direction. The elaborate and careful work of the late Abbé Hue has, unfortunately, not brought much morphological order into our knowledge of lichen structure.

(1) Lichens.

By A. L. Smith. (Cambridge Botanical Handbooks.) Pp. xxviii+464. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1921.) 55s. net.

(2) A Handbook of the British Lichens.

By Annie Lorrain Smith. Pp. vii+158. (London: The British Museum (Natural History), 1921.) 6s. 6d.