Book Reviews

Abstract

Miss JOHNSTONE'S book on plant ecology provides at a low cost an elementary account of British vegetation. Owing to the fact that there is so small a literature on British vegetation that is not scattered in various periodicals, this book will doubtless be welcome to many students and teachers. It is, however, to be regretted that, as indicated by the sub-title, the geological nature of the substratum has been utilised as the basis of treatment. Whilst a certain measure of correlation is obvious even to the superficial observer, there are so many exceptions that undue emphasis on this relationship is to be deplored. Many mistakes in the older literature of ecology, notably in relation to calcicole and calcifuge vegetation, were the outcome of an undue faith in the connexion between soil characteristics and geological formation. The occurrence of Querceta sessilifloræ on the Wenlock Limestone or of typically ash-wood vegetation on bands of corn- stone in the Old Red Sandstone serve as sufficient warning against attaching too much importance to the major geological features, but when to these we add the modifying influence of topographical, biotic, and historical factors, the influence of even what may be termed the micro-geology may become en- tirely obscured. If, however, we discount the influence of the basis of arrangement, the student will find this introduction simply written and free from the gross teleology by which so large a proportion of elementary treatments of ecology are marred.