348 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
through the upper extremity of the testa, bearing at its apex the 
scarcely perceptible cotyledons; and immediately afterwards its oppo- 
site end sends down a radicle, piercing first the testa, and finally the 
decaying pericarp. By this time the caulicle has attained a length of 
an inch or an inch and a half, and the cotyledons a diameter of one to 
two lines; and the pericarp is so far decayed that the young plants are 
released and dispersed by the winds and rains, taking root wherever 
they fall on suitable ground. 
NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
WittxomM, Monrrz: feones et Descriptiones Plantarum novarum criti- 
carum et rariorum Europe Austro-Occidentalis, precipue Hispame. 
Imp. 4to. Lipsiæ. Fasc. 6-9. 
The views of botanists must be expected to differ, as to the import- 
ance or requirement of very full and elaborate plates for the purpose 
of critically illustrating the differences between species of plants which 
many consider of doubtful value as such. We think that such are not 
 imperatively needed, and therefore we repeat our regret, expressed in 
our notice of the earlier fascicles of this work (see our Vol. VI. p. 352); 
. and we lament that such well-executed plates and such good and large 
. paper and type are not devoted to plants of more universal interest to 
. scientific botanists. Tt is not till we come to the eighth fasciculus that 
the figures and descriptions and remarks on the species of Silene are 
concluded. This division of the work is finished by a synopsis of the 
species (in Europa Austro-occidentali provenientes), seventy-three in 
number, arranged according to the subgenera and sections; and we 
cannot but think that Botany would have been a gainer, if critical re- 
marks had been given under these respective species and figures of the 
needful distinctions, —especially of those parts which are so ably pointed 
out as exhibiting the “ characteres maxime constantes" of this genus, 
at p. 11. We will take for example the two plants so well represented 
and coloured at tab. 51 :—A. Silene bryoidea, Jord., and Silene acaulis, L. 
Both are such faithful portraits of the well-known Silene acaulis, that 
| requires a very keen and a quick eye to discover, at first sight, 
any difference between the two. But of S, bryoidea it is said, ** Species 
