Book Reviews

The beautiful appealing cover conceals a piece of botanical scholarship which may at first sight disappoint the reader who wants to know more about these nice profusely flowering shrubs. Illustrations, except for the area of the genus, have not been given, and the keys and descriptions are all in Latin. Long lists of examined specimens are not very exciting, either, and the chapter on ‘ Escallonia im Gartenbau’ consists largely of an enumeration of introductions. The typographical execution is very fine. The Latin soon turns out to be simple and concise, and can be understood without great effort, in South America, where the genus is indigenous, probably even better than English and German could have been. The lack of illustrations is not a real manco, since practically all species have been well illustrated in literature, to which references are made. The descriptions are brief but carefully prepared and well-balanced, showing that this study is one absolutely confined to essentials. This may seem paradoxical in view of the pages full of cited suecimens examined, but it should not be forgotten that this vast body of documentation is the basis of the whole work, that it, once dispersed, is unlikely to be ever assembled again, and that here, too, the essentials are given, for instance, geographical latitude only in Chile. All discussion and interpretation has been avoided; the general part gives mainly the facts about Vegetative Merkmale, Merkmale der Blutenregion, Verbreitung, Okologie, Bestaubung, Pollen, Chromosomen, Bastardierung, Inhaltsstoffe, Nutzen, in ten pages. Former subdivisions of the genus have gone into synonymy almost without a word, and no new subdivision has been proposed. But not avoided was a careful study of all the local floras Dr. Sleumer could lay hands on, in order to correct the misinterpretations which obscured the picture of Escallonia in literature.