158 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
plants, nor in the lists of Captains Pullen and Penny and Mr. Ede, is 
there one newly discovered plant! The present number is accompanied 
by a neat map of the country described, including the adjacent lands 
and seas. The Botanical Plates are, first, the curious Tetrapoma pyri- 
forme, Seem. (more properly Tetrapoma barbareæfolium, Turez.), Stel- 
laria dicranoides, Fenzl., Dianthus repens, Willd., Claytonia sarmentosa, 
C. A. Mey., Artemisia androsacea, Seem. (A. glomerata, Hook. et Arn.) 
Saussurea subsinuata, Ledeb., Eritrichium aretioides, Alph. De Cand., 
Dodecatheon frigidum, Cham., and Salix speciosa, Hook. et Arn. 
The next portion, in a state of great forwardness, by Mr. Seemann, 
viz., * The Flora of North-western Mexico, including the States of Chi- 
huahua, Durango, Sinaloa, and Talisco,” will contain many new and 
curious plants. The readers of our Journal are already familiar with 
Mr. Seemann’s clever notices of his travels, in these and other regions, 
given in our pages. 
Class-book of Botany ; being an Introduction to the Study of the Vege- 
table Kingdom ; by Dr. Batrour, M.D., ete. Edinburgh. 8vo. 
1852. 
In Dr. Balfour’s ‘ Class-book of Botany,’ the author seems to have 
exhausted every attainable source of information. Few, if any, works 
on the subject contain such a mass of carefully-collected and condensed 
matter, and certainly none are more copiously, or, on the whole, better 
illustrated, upwards of 1050 woodcuts adorning 350 octavo pages. 
The subjects of structural and morphological botany are treated, in Dr. 
Balfour’s usual manner, with the greatest care and pains ; each point 
is conscientiously studied, and the results placed before the student 
include a mass of research, generally speaking, exceedingly well com- 
. bined and arranged. 
As a class-book it appears overdone, however; the details are much 
too numerous, and interfere with that simplicity and lucidity which 
should form the chief recommendations of a volume for the use of the 
student. The medieal student, especially, has generally but four 
months in which to acquire a knowledge of botany; in that time he 
can fix the outlines only of the science in his mind, except, indeed, he 
be possessed of extraordinary powers of memory; however advanta- 
geous, therefore, it may be, that all the details in question be placed 
