Chapters on Trees: a Popular Account of their Nature and Uses The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory

Abstract

WE have here a brace of books on arboriculture and floriculture, each of which will be welcomed by a certain class of readers, and will fill a useful place in popular scientific literature. Both are written in an agreeable and attractive manner, and are bound and generally got up in a style to suit the drawing-room table. The authoress of the first (or authoresses, for though two names appear on the title-page, the pronoun used is sometimes the first person singular) must not be taken too implicitly as a guide in her scientific and structural details. Many of her statements are, to say the least, very doubtful, and bear the marks of a want of acquaintance with the recent results of botanical science. Passing by this defect, we have a great deal of interesting information and gossip about a great number of our forest-trees. There are also very good descriptions, forming the best part of the book, of many other trees of great economic value with which we are not so familiar, as the ebony, the camphor, the nutmeg-tree, &c. The illustrations—one full-sized one for every tree, besides smaller ones—are, with a few exceptions, excellent.