Exotic Mushrooms (Nouvel Atlas des Champignons) by Henri Romagnesi; Rhea Rollin; E. W.EganReview by: P. H.The Irish Naturalists' Journal, Vol. 17, No. 8 (Oct., 1972), p. 283Published by: Irish Naturalists' Journal Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25537616 .

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283

extensively planted and is naturalising both on the west coast of Great Britain and in Ireland.

The actual choice of species to be included seems curious, and without any clearly defined policy. Thus a great rarity, Cypripedium calceolus> is included, while a host of fat

commoner plants are omitted.

The botanists in Ireland will particularly miss many of the plants that make this island so interesting, such as the Pinguicula species (apart from P. vulgaris), Saxifraga

spat hid aris and S. hirsuta.

There are some interesting facts included. The book contains probably the most

detailed references of any popular work to those two most recent additions to the lists of the native British flora, Diapensia lapponica and Artemisia norvegica (first found in the early 1950s), though the wisdom of such detail is questionable from the conservationist's point of

view.

A work of this nature must inevitably be compared to other volumes of illustrations. Butcher's New Illustrated British Flora is a similar kind of work and there is no doubt that the volumes reviewed here are of an equal quality with regard to the drawings, while the

accompanying text is of a much fuller and more comprehensive nature than Butcher's. Yet

the work is marred by the general sense of incompleteness exemplified by the points mentioned earlier.

The two volumes are well printed, with a strong attractive binding. They will be

of most use as an additional source of good illustrations to aid identification, but the

price will deter many. A.E.M.

Exotic Mushrooms (Nouvel Atlas des Champignons). Text by Henri Romagnesi, adapted by Rhea Rollin and E. W. Egan. Published by Sterling Publishing Co. Inc. N.Y., Oak Tree Press Ltd. London and Sydney. Distributed by Ward Lock Ltd., 116 Baker

Street, London W.l.

Priced at ?5.00 net in the United Kingdom this volume is probably worth the

money for the 160 colour plates, for it contains this number of full colour plates illustrating a wide range of the species of larger fungi with, of course, the greatest emphasis on the

Agarics. The quality of the plates is excellent and nearly all the species of the common

larger fungi dealt with can be readily recognised from the coloured illustrations.

The value of the scanty text to a student of mycology is not great; it will be of

greater interest to the nature study class or field naturalists' bent on obtaining a wide

general knowledge of natural history. The eighteen charts giving illustrated details of spore

type, cystidia and paraphyzes, etc. of the fungi listed are well produced and certainly serve as an aid to more serious microscopic study.

The main value of this book will be to introduce the larger fungi to the reader in

such a way as to arouse, his interest with the possibility of attracting him to further study of the group.

The book will prove to be a useful addition to the libraries or natural history societies and field clubs and especially those to whom reliable coloured illustrations of

the larger fungi are not available.

P.H.

Natural History of Ireland by R. Lloyd Praeger, with a new Introduction by Raymond Piper, xii -f 350 pp. Price ?3.15. Republished by E. P. Publishing Ltd., 1972.

(ISBN 0 95409 727 9). The original publication of this book n 1950 was marked in the Irish Naturalists'

Journal by a review (10 (4): 109-110, October 1950) by Dr J. Heslop Harrison. He praises it highly whilst pointing out minor errors, misprints and spelling mistakes. More importantly

he decries the lack of illustrations: "we are supplied with these wretched 'figures' wholly inadequate to do justice to so rich a text." Since the orginal publisher was Collins, who

also produced the "New Naturalist" series which is well illustrated, the omission is to be all

the more deplored. Unfortunately this is a straight reprint: warts and all. Thus we get

pure Praeger, but still no pictures. This volume includes as a frontispiece, a reproducton of an excellent drawing

of the Author by Raymond Piper made in January 1948 and presented" by the artist to the

Belfast Naturalists' Field Club. Piper's introduction, pp. v-xii, acknowledges and quotes

extensively from the R. Lloyd Praeger Memorial issue (11 (6), April 1954) of this Journal.

He has supplemented this material from his own knowledge and from other sources including Dr A. Farrington and uses it to provide a short biography of the Author, introducing him

to a new generation of naturalists who have not had the opportunity to know him.

The importance of this book is undiminished by the twenty-two years which have

passed since it was first published. W.D.L.

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