187 
NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
Essar DE PuyrosTATIQUE, appliquée à la chaíne du JURA et aux 
Contrées Voisines, &c. Par JUtEs THURMANN, Ancien Directeur de 
L Ecole normale du Jura bernois, $c. 
Puyto-Sratistics of the Jura Chain and neighbouring Countries ; or, 
the Distribution of Vascular Plants, considered chiefly with relation to 
the subjacent rocks. By JULES THURMANN. 
Such is the title, and such are the contents, so far as the title can 
indicate their contents, of two closely-filled volumes, which are well 
deserving of attention from all botanists who take interest in that 
branch of their science which connects together the facts of vegetable 
distribution and those of physical geography. The author's researches 
have been directed to the botany of a comparatively small district, and 
one that has been trodden over repeatedly by the footsteps of count- 
less collectors and describers of plants. But he has observed nature 
from a different point of view, closely and independently ; and he has 
thus acquired a store of knowledge, which has enabled him to write 
an original essay on the botany of a country that had been exhausted 
of novelty in the eyes of the less inquiring. 
The volumes of M. Thurmann may be said to afford another ex- 
ample of a circumstance which is an exception to the usual tendency 
of the English race. Notwithstanding the advanced position com- 
monly sustained by the people of this country in most matters of science 
aud art, it is nevertheless true, that the botanists of England have - 
almost invariably to look to those of other countries for such works on 
their special science as are characterized by any remarkable originality 
of thought and method, or in which the spirit of progress is mani- 
fested by some decided novelty of manfter and form in treating a sub- 
Ject not new in itself. English botanists can repeat, or copy, or imi- 
tate very successfully, but they do not often originate new views and 
improved modes ; they do not discover and invent in botany. They 
can detect and observe, can depict and describe, can catalogue and 
group individual facts and objects; but they do not connect their data, 
thus acquired, by the theoretic relations of cause and effect, nor do 
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