128 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



Asplenia have no less than a hundred names amongst them, one of them 

 dating as far back as 300 B.C., viz. Asplenium Trichomanes, the Tpi\o- 

 ftavcs of Theophrastus. Taking this venerable species as a type of the 

 author's method of treating his subject, we have, after the name, etc., 

 first a short diagnosis ; then the synonymy, commencing with the 

 Prse-Linnsean Theophrastus, and running through forty-five authors, 

 with their dates, ending with Mettenius (the specific character of each 

 being given), and occupying four full pages of forty lines each ; next 

 are quotations of twenty-four plates, beginning with Fuchs and ending 

 with Ettingshausen's and Pokorny's nature-printed plants of Austria, 

 followed by a list of published specimens ; then comes an analysis of 

 the forms of the species ; then its dimensions, together with the 

 angles its fronds make with the perpendicular ; then follow successively 

 its physiognomy, morphology, biology, the soil it prefers, horizontal 

 distribution (three pages), vertical distribution, and lastly, the erroneous 

 references and other sources of error in published books, etc. The 

 work further contains two plates of forms of Asplenium Adiantum- 

 nigrum, of spores of all the species, and a very neat Mercator's chart 

 of the world, on which the distribution of all the species is traced. 



Upon the whole this is a valuable contribution to the study of 

 pteridology, and is evidently extremely carefully and accurately done. 

 There is no attempt at species-making, paradox, or transcendentalism ; 

 it is strictly a scientific work throughout, and we only wish that the 

 author would devote his energies to the elucidation of some less-known 

 and more extensive tribes of plants. 



Klinsmann, Ernst Ferdinand ; Clavis Dilleniana ad Hortum 



Elthamensem. 4to. Dantzig, 1856. 



This is a key to the modern names of all the plants described and 

 figured in the very valuable work of Dillenius, entitled c Horti Eltha- 

 mensis Plantae rariores:" first, according to the numbering of the 

 plates ; and secondly, in alphabetical order. It seems to be executed 

 with much care. 



