180 
effect on the botany not alone of the area they cover, but of the 
world. The volume here reviewed is essentially an original piece 
of work. One sees at once by an inspection of its pages that the 
author has not been content to accept the dictum of previous 
writers, but that his descriptions have been drawn from his own — | 
material and his conclusions reached from his own observations. : 
The great value of this kind of work is obvious, for it presents an 
entirely new conception of the subject matter. 
Departing from the sequence of orders taken up by him in the 
Flora Franciscana Professor Greene now adopts with slight modi- 
fications the arrangement as outlined in Baron von Mueller’s last 
edition of the “Census of Australian Plants,” placing the Chori- 3 
petelee Hypogyne as the first division of the Dicotyledons and 7 
ending with Monocotyledons, of which sub-class only the orders — 
Orchidacee, Iridaceee and Liliacez are taken up, the lower orders 
being excluded on the statement that “anumber of genera and : 
species much greater than the beginner may master in one se@— 
-son’s work, or in three,’ are included in the ninety orders treated. — 
Professor Greene evidently does not accord much value to the : 
modern notion of proceeding from the simple to the complex; — 
perhaps for the purpose for which his Manual has been written for : 
“persons desiring to make some beginnings in the systematic 
botany of Middle California” the arrangement adopted is as good : 
as anything. da 
A considerable number of new species are proposed, and many — 
new views advanced on the limitations of genera, especially in the, 
order Composite, tending principally to maintaining more gency 
than have recently been recognized. Several of these are Pro" 
posed as new. The descriptions are concise, clearly written and 
well contrasted. Keys to the genera are given for each order and 
the statements of the more characteristic features of the species : 
are set in italic type. Professor Greene questions the wisdom ie 
this in his preface, remarking on the temptation it offers to SY 
dents to pass over all the descriptive matter except the keys and 
the italicised words. In our opinion it is advantageous despite 
the objection cited against it. Aca 
In nomenclature the maintenance of the oldest specific 2 
has been consistently followed, and the first author cited in P¥ 
