BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 195 



perhaps much underrated), and then proceeds to a brief general 

 plan of the work. " Its object is to give a concise view of 

 the state of Systematical Botany at the present day, to show 

 the relation, or supposed relation, of one group of plants to 

 another, to explain their geographical distribution, and to 

 point out the various uses to which the species are applied in 

 different countries. The names of all known Genera, with 

 their synonyms, are given under each Natural Order, the 

 numbers of the Genera and Species are, in every case, com- 

 puted from what seems to be the best authority, and com- 

 plete Indices of the multitudes of names embodied in the 

 work are added, so as to enable a Botanist to know imme- 

 diately under what Natural Order a given Genus is stationed, 

 or what the uses are to which any species has been applied. 

 Finally, the work is copiously illustrated by wood and gly- 

 phographic cuts, and, for the convenience of students, an 

 artificial Analysis of the System is placed at the end. Some 

 of these points demanda few words of comment. In the 

 succeeding pages the author first takes certain characters 

 common to very extensive assemblages of plants, by means 

 of which Classes have been constituted, and secondly, of 

 breaking up those Classes into minor groups called Alliances, 

 whose common characters are also more extensive than those 

 of Natural Orders, and under which the Natural Orders are 

 themselves assembled. Very short characters have been 

 proposed, under the name of Diagnoses, for both Alliances 

 and Orders j these are intended to express the prevailing 

 tendency observable in each group, but not to include casual 

 exceptions, for which the reader is referred to the descrip- 

 tions immediately following the Diagnosis. — The serious 

 fault committed in the author's former work, of founding 

 Alliances upon simple Natural Orders, has been avoided in 

 every case except that of Palms, which in reality seem to 

 form an Alliance by themselves. The name Alliance has 

 been preserved in preference to that of class, family, circle, 

 cohort, &c., because it is not susceptible of two interpretations 

 as is the case with all the others ; it is employed as an equi- 



