NOTICES OF BOOKS, ' 221 



merits should be so little known in this country is not to be wondered 

 at, considering how few even of the professed Cryptogamists of the day 

 appreciate that accurate acquaintance with the details of botanical science 

 upon which a reputation must be founded if it is to be enduring ; but 

 it is even more wonderful that, in an age which boasts so much of a 

 just and generous appreciation of advances in economic science, the 

 first public acknowledgment of Mr. Berkeley's services in explaining 

 the diseases, and proposing practical methods for checking them, in the 

 cases of the Vine, the Hop, and the Potato, should come from a foreign 

 Power.* 



It is beyond our province to introduce lengthy quotations by which 

 the merits of a work may be more or less well judged of; but there are 

 some points discussed in Mr. Berkeley's work, of so high a general in- 

 terest in botany, and which appear to us to be so ably and philosophi- 

 cally treated, that we cannot omit pressing them upon the attention of 

 all classes of botanists, and many of them indeed upon naturalists of 

 every degree. In such points the Preliminary Observations abound ; 

 thus in the second page we find evidence of the author having studied 

 the difficult subject of the anatomy of Nymphceace<B> and the relative 

 value of Dictyogens, Rhizogens, and Gymnogens as natural groups. The 

 details of the minute anatomy of Cryptogams are illustrated by analo- 

 gous structures in flowering plants, and their modes of development 

 compared with great skill and judgment. A long article is introduced 

 on the real or supposed coincidences in the structure and development 

 of the pollen-grains, spores, and antherozoids on the one hand, and 

 on the other of the ovules, embryo and embryonal sac, and vesicles, with 

 the various modifications of the germ-cell in the higher Cryptogams, 

 After a full and accurate resume of the chief facts in either case, Mr. 

 Berkeley arrives at the conclusion, that the coincidences of structure 

 are apparent, and not real, and that those of development are reducible 

 to a higher law, which correlates all the facts of embryology, or rather 

 sexuality, and not to a special law that would ally Conifers more closely 

 with Lycopods than with Dicotyledons, or place Lycopods in the series 



of Phaenogamic plants. 



Throughout the work similar discussions are abundantly interspersed, 



* Whilst penning this notice, the information has reached us that the French 

 Government has awarded Mr. Berkeley a honorarium of 500 francs for his labours on 

 the nature and cure of the Vine-disease. We believe that this was a wholly spon- 

 taneous act on the part of our allies, and that it is no less an agreeable surprise to 

 Mr. Berkeley than to all his English friends. 



