NOTICES OF BOOKS. 189 
differential character of the most decided kind. The influence of soils 
and rocks, in relation chiefly to humidity and compactness, with that 
of climate in relation to altitudes, are the principal points of investiga- 
tion and information. 
Now, by what name ought a work of this character to be desig- 
nated? It is a local flora, in so far as it is an enumeration of the 
plants of a small area, with the specification of their census and local- 
ities. But instead of describing the plants themselves, the physical 
peculiarities of place and situation, in connection with which the plants 
, occur, are the things to be described and explained. The author en- 
deavours to find a name sufficiently indicative of the purpose and 
contents of his work. He takes ** Phyto-statique, " rather shorter than 
* Phyto-statistique," although the latter might be less liable to be 
misapprehended,—by Englishmen, at least. But names already in 
use for other purposes do not serve clearly to express new things or 
new ideas, unless by forming combinations of them, to meet the special 
cases; and hence result words of inconvenient length and sound, or 
sentences to be employed for single names. Far better is it to invent 
a new name, or to take up and re-apply, in a defined sense, some old 
word or name of obsolete meaning. The adopted name is thus made 
to signify the work itself; and the work in turn becomes an illustra- 
tion of the name, sufficiently precise to allow of its being again applied — — 
and understood as to the generic name for all or any works ofa similar — — 
character. 
The author who first applied the name of Flora to signify a local Td 
enumeration of plants, descriptive or otherwise, was doubtless guilty — 
of an innovation upon the meaning of a name that had become obso- —— 
lete in its original sense. But this re-applied name now furnishes a — 
very convenient generic title, that never fails to express the nature of - 
the work to which it belongs. If botanists would, in like manner, - * 
adopt the proposed name of Cybele, as a generic title for works similar — 
in character to the ‘Essai de Phytostatique,’ &e., this latter mytho- — 
logical name would become equally convenient in use, and be found — 
sufficiently significant of their kind and purport. ‘Cybele du Jura’ — 
would have been a shorter and more convenient title for a book, than — 
is the paraphrase of nine words employed by M. Thurmann. Our 
remark here, however, is to be understood simply in a suggestive sense — — 
for the future. No doubt the title of M. Thurmann’s work had been 
