NOTICES OF BOOKS. 157 



To the excellence of Gray's ' Manual of the Botany of the Northern 

 United States ' we have already recorded our testimony ; it has no rival 

 in any country (written in the vernacular), if we consider its merits as a 

 scientific work, its extent, originality, and the skill and judgment dis- 

 played in the generic and specific characters, etc. Our various British 

 Floras scarcely contain half the number of species, and display little or 

 no originality ; and it is not in the nature of things that they should 

 do so ; they have further so grown out of one another that they present 

 little or no unity of design or purpose ; and the large genera are too 

 often treated on different principles in the same volume; in other 

 words, they are contributed by various botanists, or founded upon 

 their labours, though these botanists differ materially in their mode of 

 treating genera and species. 



The stride the pupil must make from Gray's 'Lessons' to his 'Manual' 

 is however very great ; and though a thorough mastery of the neces- 

 sary amount of the *■ Lessons ' will fully qualify a student to make the 

 best use of the \ Manual ' ; still he will find it very difficult to do so at 

 first, except he has such an amount of assistance from a teacher, or 

 such initiatory training as a book on American plants, on the plan of 

 Lindley's ' School Botany/ would afford. By the use of the latter 

 work the pupil is soon grounded in the fundamental principles and 

 practice of classification, and further acquires a good elementary know- 

 ledge of some of the largest and most conspicuous Natural Orders. 

 Why these Natural Orders should not be readily recognized by the 

 pupil in a general work, in which they are always the most conspicu- 

 ous, is not at first very obvious ; but the fact is notorious to those who 

 are engaged in teaching, that the student, in his initiatory attempts to 

 determine the genus of a common plant, belonging to a large Natural 

 Order, almost invariably begins by placing it in some small, obscure, or 

 paradoxical group : it is true that failures are often useful, but there 

 are limits beyond which they are waste of time and positive discou- 

 ragements. On these accounts we consider that a work which, like 

 Lindley's ' School Botany/ proceeding on sound principles, gives the 

 pupil a clear and definite acquaintance with the forty or sixty most 

 comprehensive and important Natural Orders of a country, is almost 

 essential to the beginner who has not a tutor as well as a book. 



It remains to say a few words on the plan and execution of Professor 

 Grav's work. After a short introductory chapter on the nature tod 



