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The sixteen selections chosen are divided into five groups: Intro- duction, Psychotropics, Analytic, Applied, Kinesics. Section two, naturally, is devoted solely to various anthropological consideration of psychotropic plants : “Anthropological perspectives on hallucination, hallucinogens and the shamanic origins of religion”, “History and ethnography of cannabis”, “Soma, the three-and-one-half millenia mystery”. The first of these chapters is rewritten, taken from five previous articles, and offers searching and challenging thoughts on the underlying importance of hallucinogenic plants to religion. The second supplies what few historical reviews of marijuana present -the ethnographic significance of the spread and use of this drug plant. The third accepts and critically analyzes Wasson’s recent identification of the ancient Indian soma as the mushroom Amanita muscaria.

References to plants are frequent in many of the other chapters, although the thrust of the rest of the volume is anthropological and psychol- ogical.

LaBarre’s high scholarship, demanding meticulousness and inquisitively analytic presentation is too widely recognized to stress here, beyond mentioning that the selections chosen for this book are well made and admirably demonstrate why the synthetic nature of his writing has been a major factor in the interdisciplinary advance of anthropology during the past forty years.

Richard Evans Schultes

Elsevier’s Dictionary of Botany. I. Plant Names in English, French, German, Latin and Russian

by Paul Macura; published by Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam, New York, 1979; 580 pp., price $109.75.

Undoubtedly a volume of intensive research of a most meticulous and painstaking nature, this Dictionary should find extensive use for many years to come. It is true that the available multilingual dictionaries of plant names in various languages are far from complete, and their limited character means that frequently the researcher must have recourse to several or even to books that are not dictionaries - and this chore is impossible in many institutions with small libraries.

The first part of the Dictionary lists alphabetically 6131 entries by their English names, giving their French, German and Latin equivalents. This section is followed by alphabetical indexes for the French, German and Latin names. A final section devotes 143 pages to Russian: 59 pages to the 6131 names numerically ordered and 81 pages to an alphabetic index.

In view of the great and increasing importance of tropical plants, it is unfortunate that the author did not include Spanish and Brazilian names - although, since names of plants in Ibero-American countries vary so much from nation to nation and even within a nation, this omission is certainly pardonable. Botany, however, desperately needs such a dictionary, especially for the Spanish names of plants.

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The author is greatly to be complimented in following a reputable dictionary of the English language and not the absurd attempt to revise the English language imposed on United States government scientists by the government printing office in Washington, blessed by the volume euphemis- tically entitled Standardized Plant Names and, unfortunately, followed by some American authors. In this and many other aspects, the book shines with true scholarship.

The price of this relatively small volume is excessively high, even at to- day’s inflated cost of books - due undoubtedly to the publisher’s expecta- tions of a comparatively limited market. But those who do buy the book - and it should most certainly be in every botanical, horticultural and agricul- tural library -- will indeed wear out the volume with constant use, for there is little published that can serve the same purpose.

Richard Evans Schultes

The Biology of Trees Native to Tropical Florida by P. B. Tomlinson; published by Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research and Atkins Garden Fund, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1980; v + 480 pp., 166 line drawings (by Priscilla Fawcett), price $22.50.

Tomlinson’s contribution will provide a most useful tool in under- standing the neglected tree flora of the hot, humid parts of coastal and southern Florida.

A tropical botanist might have preferred the term subtropical, for these areas hardly seem geographically to qualify as the tropics. But it is true, as the author points out, that approximately 80 of the 100 or so species of trees in these parts of Florida “are tropical in distribution, reaching their northern limit in South Florida.” Consequently, the term tropical, at first glance questionable, can floristically be justified.

Each family and genus is briefly described. The species illustrated with line drawings are fully considered from the point of view of biological aspects, such as growth and flowering and fruiting habits. A useful and well chosen bibliography is offered for each family. The treatment throughout is characterized by the authenticity of an expert thoroughly familiar with the plants in the field and of their biology.

An outstanding feature of the book is the series of magnificent line drawings by the artist at the Fairchild Tropical Garden. They are useful, scientifically detailed, and accurate and artistic, comprising not only habit drawings but enlarged sketches of buds, flowers and fruits as well as cross- sections, floral diagrams, enlargements of stamens or other diagnostically important parts, etc.

A general introduction presents a floristic and ecological consideration of the south Florida flora, a masterful discussion of tree growth in the region