C( 



NOTICES OF BOOKS. g9 



though Dr. Seemann is, by habit and education, as proved by his 

 publications, a man of science, and though his book professes to be a 

 "scientific work,"* the genera are all alj)habeticallff arranged, \si\uht 

 Mr. Wallace, who makes no pretensions to botanical science, has ar- 

 ranged all the genera and species in the order adopted by Dr. Martins 

 in his learned and elaborate work on the Palms. But this is not all, 

 for the fffures of the Palms are also attempted to be arranged alpha- 

 betically; and there might have been some reason for this, as it miglit 

 be supposed the object was to have the plates located opposite or 

 near to the respective descriptions ; Acrocomia Mexicana^ for example, 

 amongst the descriptions of Acrocomia: but no such thing; the plate 

 of Arenga is the only genus beginning with A that is ranked under that 

 letter, and that is not placed opposite to the description of Arenga, 

 Figures of Cocos and Copernicia come among Borassus, The plate of 

 Ph^telephas comes amongst Phoenix, but no other whatsoever of the 

 twenty plates is in juxtaposition with its respective initial letter : not 

 one m the whole book with its respective genus. This, too, is the more 

 tantalizing, because, though the plates are numbered, we find no refe- 

 rence to the plate under the descriptions. There is indeed a list of 

 plates enumerated after the preface, though, being alphabetical like the 

 plates, its use is not easily divined. Even the alphabetical arrangement 

 naust be taken with some allowance, for the plates, being mostly copied 

 (with acknowledgment) from Martius, there are in several instances 

 two different genera on one plate, a plan justifiable perhaps in the 

 case of the very costly figures of the original work, but scarcely re- 

 C[uired here. And then, in this list of plates, we find Nipa^ not under 

 the letter N (though it is so in the description), but under A, imme- 

 diately following Arenga mccharifera. 



In regard to the plates themselves, the author, in his characteris- 

 tics of the Family, dwells on " the dark green foliage of the waving 

 Palms;" and Martius, from whom these figures are taken, represents, 

 faithfully, the bright green of the majority of Palms ; but that is a 

 colour which seems wholly eschewed in this book ; a scorching brown 

 characterizes everything in the trees and landscape, save the dabs oi' 

 blue for sky and water, so that we are sure Martius would not acknow- 



• " It is not a purely literary production, but a scientific work, which, to meet 

 the views of my publisher, has assumed a popular garb, in which mere hterary coin 

 siderations have been made subordinate to scientific accuracy."— /'r^/^^'?, p. xiv. 



VOL. vm. 



N 



