Familiar Wild Flowers

Abstract

SCIENTIFIC books are of three kinds: to inform the scientific world of some fresh discovery or advance—works of research; to offer a digest, for the information of students, of results already attained—text-books; and to attract to the paths of science the outside public—popular works. The pretty and attractive book before us belongs to the last of these categories, and is, we think, well calculated to gain the end in view. It consists of chromo-lithographs of nearly fifty of our better-known native wild flowers, with two or three pages of gossipy talk about each. Of the letter-press not much more can be said than that it is fairly accurate from a botanical point of view, and pleasantly written. The illustrations strike us as unusually good of their kind. They have of course the inherent defects of this mode of illustration, in the absence of half-tones and delicate shades; but the general aspect of the plant is in nearly all cases well and faithfully given, and the drawing is good. The book is a very good one to put in the hands of a child to interest him or her in the wealth of wild flowers which is such a source of delight to all dwellers in the country who have eyes educated to see their beauty.

Familiar Wild Flowers.

Figured and Described byF. Edward Hulme. First Series. With Coloured Plates. (Cassell, Petter, and Galpin.)