188 NOTICES OF BOOKS. z 
they often generalize their details, so far as to elevate these into the 
category of scientific principles. 
With certain reservations, the essay of M. Thurmann may be cited 
as an example of the opposite kind. It is truly a new work, in method 
and matter, and not simply a new book after an old model. The 
novelty, however, here lies rather in the form and manner of treat- 
ment, than in any originality of conception otherwise. It is geo- 
graphical botany on a very local scale, as respects the extent of country 
under the author’s consideration, elaborated with great copiousness of 
statement and explanation ; but it is worked out with sufficient com- 
bination and connectedness of the details, to give to the publication far 
more than a merely local interest and value. The faults of the essay 
may lie mainly in the want of greater condensation, if regarded as a. 
work for the instruction and use of distant botanists. No doubt, a 
multitude of details are compressed into comparatively small space of 
print, by using certain regular series of single letters instead of words 
at length; as, for example, the letters * d. t. l. J.," or “d. t. 1. c. a. 
instead of the words “dans tout le Jura," or “dans toutes les contrées 
ambiantes ;" but this is compression in space, rather than condensation 
of thought and information. 
M. Thurmann has felt the usual inconvenience of writers who treat 
a subject under a new form or from a new point of view, by not finding 
any suitable name for indicating the contents or purpose of his work 
among those in current use with botanists. His first volume treats of 
the physical peculiarities of the area to which his work relates, the 
local variations of its flora and vegetation in connection therewith, - 
comparisons between the botany of this special area and that of sur- 
rounding countries, with many other matters. The second volume 
includes a systematic enumeration of the plants of the Jura, with the 
geographic and topographic distribution of each species treated sepa- 
rately and in considerable detail. This second volume thus bears 
some generic resemblance to the volumes of the * Cybele Britannica,’ 
as far as the latter work has been yet published ; while the first volume 
. has some similitude with an earlier publication, by the author of the 
- ‘Cybele? These are the only English works with which that of M. 
— Thurmann can be compared, and the resemblance is by no means 
. close. Indeed, the careful and minute attention bestowed upon the 
. soils and subjacent rocks on which the plants grow, is in itself a 
