Suggestions
FOR SEVERAL YEARS now Dr. Charles J. Lyon, Professor of Botany, has recommended gardening books in the May issue. Here are his recommendations for 1940.
Of the popular books in the field of pure botany, there are two notable ones, published in 1939. One is frankly for popular consumption and light reading but the other is real science in readable form. I write first of the popular one.
A. Hyatt Verrill: Wonder Plants andPlant Wonders. Appleton-Century Co., 295 pages, illustrated. New York, 1939.
When a trained botanist reads this work, he finds errors and questionable statements but the layman can read it with pleasure and the assurance that the account is essentially correct. The author, once known only for his fiction, has compiled under intriguing chapter headings, descriptions and accounts of many unusual plants. Some are shown to be unusual in behavior or in structure, others in size, others in devices for water storage, dormancy, insect catching and self-protection. There are stories and histories of useful plants while others are only the curious phenomena in the plant world. At times the reader may wonder if a plant really can have nerves or intelligence but the tales are quite convincing and only a few are too unusual to believe in the absence of real proof.
Sydney Mangham: Earth's Green Mantle. Plant Science for the General Reader. Macmillan, New York, 1939. 322 pages, illustrated.
This is a remarkable story of all phases of plant life, written in a narrative style but packed with pure botany. Almost no field of botany is untouched and the exposition is technically correct. The author carries the intelligent reader by progressive stages ever deeper into the inner workings of plant tissues and the interrelationships of plant communities. The plant geography is particularly well represented. The illustrations vary from charts and diagrams to photographs from every corner of the earth. There are scores of these pictures of plants and vegetation. Many are from strange lands where the plants are even stranger, as in Africa and Australia. For the person who never "took" botany and who wants to study the subject in spare time and in not too easy stages, this readable book by a reliable author will form a sound textbook. Other readers can enjoy it by simply reading if they are not afraid of useful scientific terms.
