Abstract
WE are glad to know that the first volume published under the same title as this has met with the success it deserves, and we hope the present pocket-book will have a similar welcome extended to it. Four hundred species of flowering plants were described and illustrated in the first series, which Mr. Step now supplements with descriptions of 325 species, 130 being represented upon coloured plates, while 23 are shown in black and white. The plates render the identification of a plant a comparatively easy matter, and the clear descriptions of the plants are worthy accompaniments to them. Mr. Thiselton-Dyer should rejoice at the opportunity which the book affords every one to learn something about botany from “wayside and woodland.” It will be remembered that as president of the botanical section of the British Association last year, he condemned the system of botanical teaching followed in many schools for examination purposes, and pleaded that the subject should be developed as an educational instrument. In the course of his address he said: “The modern university student of botany puts his elders to blush by his minute knowledge of some small point in vegetable histology. But he can tell you little of the contents of a country hedgerow; and if you put an unfamiliar plant in his hands, he is pretty much at a loss how to set about recognising its affinities.” Mr. Step's book provides such students with the materials to make up their deficiencies,; it is a book which will develop the observant faculties in young students of natural history, and one which will make more lovers of botany than all the examination syllabuses and text-book formulas yet devised.
Wayside and Woodland Blossoms. A Pocket Guide to British Wild Flowers for the Country Rambler.
(Second Series.) By Edward Step. Pp. 170. (London: Frederick Warne and Co., 1896.)
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Wayside and Woodland Blossoms A Pocket Guide to British Wild Flowers for the Country Rambler. Nature 54, 221 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/054221b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/054221b0