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plants available to him, for instance certain species,
not from Syria but from other Mediterranean regions or from
S.W. Arabia, which were then cultivated in Theban gardens.
This view is disappointing as it reduces the interest of the
"botanical chamber", but it appears that it must be accepted,
since it is borne out by the fact that the only six plants
which are definitely recognisable in the reliefs are not
now native to Syria: Nymphaea coerulea Sav.; Punica gran-
atum L.; Arum italicum L.; Dracunculus vulgaris Schott;
Kalanchoe sp.; Iris sp.

THEOPHRASTUS, though he lived more than a thousand
years after the botanical chamber of THUTMOSIS III was decorated,
is often known as the father of Botany. Modern detailed studies not infrequently reveal that his work is of
even finer quality than one might suppose at first glance.
G. SENN has recently worked over the oak galls mentioned
by THEOPHRASTUS (Trans. R. Soc. Edinb., 60, 1941, 343-54),
and considers that, though formerly scholars have concluded that
the Theophrastean oak galls are hardly capable of identification,
nine of the sixteen those to which he alludes can actually
he named with certainty today. SENN'S illustrated account
should be very valuable to students of the history of
cecidiology.

Passing over a period of 1500 years, the next contribution we have to notice relates to a Chinese printed
herbal, which much predates any herbal printed in Europe
(HUMMEL, A.W., The Printed Herbal of 1249 A.D., Isis, 33,