Book Review

Dr. Voorhoeve’s book on Liberian high forest trees contains 72 full-page figures, showing in detail the botanical characters of more than 70 species, while of some dozens more details are added in order to render easy identification of species not specially treated in the book. The drawings are firm and clear, delicately executed and rank among the best published in recent years. Detailed descriptions accompany the figures, careful taxonomical notes explain the adopted delimitation and distribution of each species. Ecological data, field notes, the general aspect of each tree and information important to foresters (slash, bark, wood, silviculture) are given. There are 32 full pages photographs of trunk habits. These large scale photographs are highly valuable as a means of identification on the spot and very instructive to beginning foresters. As a rule one finds in forester’s flora’s small size photographs, which fail to convey the essentials to those not familiar with the species. These are exactly who need them most and, I presume, possibly later authors on similar subjects will try to convince publishers to reproduce illustrative photographs in a format as found in Dr. Voorhoeve’s book. Actually the book is full of new facts and observations. Dr. Voorhoeve studied during three years the Liberian forest on the spot and assembled or verified the data contained in the scarce literature on Liberian forests. Back in Europe, he completed his research by 1 >4 years of study in the Laboratory for Plant Taxonomy and -Geography in the University of Agriculture at Wageningen.