Wild Flowers of Attica

Abstract

MR. SHIRLEY ATCHLEY, long a member of the British Legation at Athens, was a man who published nothing, but enjoyed a scholar's reputation among men of learning. For he knew the paths and the by-paths, the beaten and unbeaten tracks of Greece as no one else did and probably no other man had ever done; and his knowledge was so great as to become almost legendary of the language and its dialects, the folklore and not least the field-botany, both of the mainland and of the islands. He dreamed of the books he should write some day; he even planned one on the vernacular names of the Greek plants, but nothing came of it. But he kept on sending plants, rare and common, to Kew until he built up a great herbarium, and the more his reputation grew the more kindly and good-humouredly did he answer the countless questions which men were wont to ask him.

Wild Flowers of Attica

By the late Shirley Clifford Atchley. Prepared for publication by Dr. W. B. Turrill. Pp. xix + 60 + 22 plates. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1938.) 25s. net.