350 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



teristic. The remaining 270 include a vast multitude of species of 

 other authors, which but for actual inspection he would not have been 

 able to reduce ; whence there is good reason to suppose that a consi- 

 derable proportion of the unknown 100 would, if examined by Dr. 

 Weddell, share the same fate. And if so large a percentage of de- 

 scribed species are virtually inaccessible to him, and left in doubt at 

 the close of the first century of the systematic study of Nettles, what 

 are the prospects of the systematist at the end of the next ? especially 

 if authors persist in loosely characterizing species, often from single 

 specimens, at the rate they have been doing. Again, after the first 

 part of Mr. WeddelPs work has appeared in Paris, and whilst the second 

 is announced as ready, and when his labours are so widely and well 

 known and appreciated that most botanists have been glad to place 

 their materials in his hands, a learned botanist in another country, with 

 no materials but what his own herbarium and library afford, suddenly 

 publishes monographs of some of the largest genera of Urticece, in which 

 monographs Dr. Weddell finds his own labours wholly ignored. The mis- 

 chief and confusion thus effected is incalculable ; of their probable ex- 

 tent some idea may be formed from the facts mentioned by Dr. Wed- 

 dell in his appendix, from which it may be gathered that whereas he 

 has in his monograph 39 species of Bcehtneria, whereof 7 or 8 are 

 doubtful, and only 17 bear his own name, Mr. Blume's monograph 

 possesses upwards of 40 additional specific names, with his own ap- 

 pended. There is, in short, no parallelism whatsoever between the 

 genera Bcehmeria, Parietaria, and Pouzolzia, as worked out by Blume 

 and Weddell ; they might be supposed to belong to different Natural 

 Orders, or to have been described from different genera and species, so 

 utterly at variance are they in nomenclature and method of treatment. 



We cannot conclude without expressing a hope that Dr. Weddell will 

 proceed to the elucidation of the Artocarpea, Morece, etc. with the 

 same care, energy, and knowledge which distinguish his Monograph 

 of Uriicece. 



Flo? 



Flora Indite 



Batav;e. 8vo. (with Plates.) Amsterdam and Utrecht. 

 A work of no small importance to the botanical world is now in 

 course of publication in Holland, by our excellent friend Dr. and Pro- 

 fessor Miquel; namely, a Flora of the Dutch East Indian possessions, 



