Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS

BOTANICAL LATIN by

WILLIAM T .

STEARN

(Published by Nelson, at 5 gns.)

T o those of us who find our school Latin pretty rusty, the newly published Botanical Latin by William T . Stearn can prove of enormous help. He shows how botanical Latin has developed from classical Latin to provide a tool by which the scientist can make an accurate description in a form intelligible to workers of every land.

He quotes R. A. Knox writing of ecclesiastical Latin: "Call it dog-Latin if you will, there remains the proverb which teils us that a living dog is better than a dead lion, and the difference between the dog-Latin of St. Jerome and the lion-Latin of Cicero is the difference between a living language and a dead one." And so it is with Botanical Latin.

T h e working part of the book, the vocabularies, descriptive terminology and so on are of enormous value and the opening chapters, giving a history of the development of Botanical Latin, are fĂźll of interest.

T h e whole book is one to add much to the insight of those who would like to see a little more deeply into the terminology they use.

D.J.M.

FLOWERS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN by

OLEG POLUNIN a n d ANTHONY

HUXLEY

{Published by Chatto and Windus, at 42/-) With the increasing habit of ordinary people of taking their holidays round the Mediterranean, the book Flowers of the Mediterranean by Polunin and Huxley is a good companion.

T h e colour pictures are reduced from photographs and though mostly very good sometimes fail to give important details from which an identification can be guessed. These must, of course, be used in conjunction with the descriptions in the text, which are very good. T h e additional information given regarding the herbal use of the plant and the plants association with Classical or Biblical lore adds a lot to the interest; thus the seeds of the Melia asedarach are used for making the beads of rosaries and the Paliurus Spina—christi may have made Christ's crown of thorns.

D.J.M.

BOOK

REVIEW

331

KNOW YOUR CONIFERS by

THE

FORESTRY

COMMISSION

(.Published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office, at 5/-) Although the only indigenous conifers in this country are the Scots Pine, the Yew, and the Juniper so many others have been introduced and can be seen in parks or in the Forestry Commission's plantations, that the study and recognition of them is an interesting botanical exercise.

The Forestry Commission has recently published a booklet Know Your Conifers and this will help anyone who has difficulty in recognising a Douglas Fir or a Norwegian Spruce. The book has excellent photographs and line drawings showing the whole tree and the identification details. All this for 5/-.

D.J.M. THE MIDNIGHT FOREST by

NORAH

BURKE

[Published by Jarrolds, at 30j-) This is a delightful book for any naturalist who likes a wellwritten book and who would enjoy by proxy intimate acquaintance with the behaviour of large and small animals in an English forest. I say "by proxy" for not many of us could endure nights even in deep winter sitting all alone but for animal neighbours in the forest, unable to sneeze or even breathe heavily or Stretch a cramped or frozen limb for fear of betraying presence behind a screen of aromatic pine branches to disguise even a scent of human being.

What Mrs. Walrond saw so closely was well worth the hardships for her and to us in our cosy chairs by the fireside. She makes us feel we are out there with her, seeing and hearing everything.

Of course her main theme is still Badgers following her earlier book "King Todd", but all the animals of the night come within ränge of her sight and binoculars, hearing and smell. The crackle of a twig trodden on teils her who is Coming—Roe deer, Fallow deer, Fox or Hedgehog; small animals like Bank Vole and Mouse run over her while a Mole goes humping along just underground.

Badger sees this too and follows, pounces on a hump, digs and gets his long teeth into the little creature and drags it out to eat. She notes the alarm calls right across the forest given by a bird to alert all other animals that an enemy of them all is about.

Her sense of smell is as keen as that of the animals, she knows who has brushed past and sniffs into the entrances of a Badger's tunnel and knows whether far down is a big boar or his wife and cubs, or whether a Fox has been there.

332 Transactions of the Suffolk Naturalists',

Vol. 13, Part 5

But the last chapter is very sad—that hard winter with temperatures down to 30 to 37 degrees of frost killed many big and little animals—not from starvation, though it was hard work scratching the frozen ground for insects, beetles, and worms, but from unaccustomed cold. "Deer were dying in the snowy forest and they were plump and undamaged. Squirrels died in their dreys, but Foxes waxed fat and prosperous."

But readers must choose for themselves the passages that please them most. I like this one—"Hans the husband and father pauses to get beetles out of a frozen tree-stump, tears the rotten wood away with his strong teeth and throws it aside. He sniffs the place over. That's the lot gone again." Meantime Gretel and his two children are "very playful, they are bouncing at her face and trying to suckle as she stood there."

J.C.N.W.