350 : NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
which now tend to give to his Classes and Alliances: an artificial cha- 
racter, and prevent the thorough appreciation of his work by botanists. 
We have dwelt at greater length than we intended on the blemishes 
of this admirable work, and in doing so we have undertaken a most 
ungracious duty ; but certainly we have experienced some inconveni- 
ence in the course of our every-day use of the * Vegetable Kingdom. 
It must however be carefully borne in mind, that if, on the one hand, 
Dr. Lindley claims no ordinary share of such peculiar views, on the 
other hand that there is, with the exception of Robert Brown, no man 
in England who has thrown so much light upon the affinities of the 
Natural Orders, nor any, in this or any other country, who has diffused 
so much sound botanical information regarding them amongst all classes 
of inquirers. Whether by his lectures, by his works on all branches of 
botany, elementary and profound, on medical, economical, physiological, 
or systematic subjects, or by his indefatigable labours for horticulture 
and horticulturists, for public gardens or for private, for the Govern- 
ment or for the people, he has been prominently before the public for 
many years as the most energetic and useful botanist of his day, as he 
is, for his knowledge and varied acquirements, one of the greatest. 
His zeal in diffusing what he believes to be truth, and his unvarying 
practice of withholding no information, books, or specimens, or manu- 
scripts, that he thinks will be useful to his fellow-botanists, prove him 
to be as liberal as he is enlightened. 
Orta HISPANICA; seu Delectus Plantarum rariorum aut nondum rite 
|. notarum per Hispanias sponte nascentium, auctore PHILIPPO BARKER 
|... WEBB, Orp. Car. III. Ea. etc. Folio, 40 Plates. Paris. 1853. 
. . ltis strange that a country which has produced her Cavanilles and 
her Ruiz and Pavon, should not in the present day afford, at least as 
far as our knowledge goes, one Botanist able or willing to describe the 
plants of her own soil or of her diminished colonies. The task is left 
to foreigners, and it has happily fallen into the hands of most competent 
ones. Mr. Philip Barker Webb has completed his magnificent * Flora 
Canariensis’ (eminently magnificent if taken in conjunction with the 
