NOTICES OF BOOKS. 191 
The first part of Vol. V. is before us, terminating with tab. 1762! 
and containing 139 plates of Orchidacee ; so that in the course of the 
eleven or twelve years in which Dr. Wight has been engaged in its pub- 
lication, he has brought out scarcely fewer than 150 plates annually. 
These sometimes are copied from Roxburgh’s unpublished drawings, and 
occasionally from dried specimens, but generally from the living wild 
plant; on their accuracy, therefore, we place every reliance, and indeed 
so anxious is Dr. Wight himself on this point, that he has in most cases, 
perhaps in every case, detected the error and corrected it in the accom- 
panying short descriptions. From the artist not understanding English, 
far less Latin, we have frequently the names on the plates at variance 
with those in the letterpress; this however is a venial error, which 
any one may correct for himself. 
It may not be uninteresting here to notice the principal families 
illustrated by Dr. Wight. To Balsaminacee 24 plates are devoted; to 
Leguminose, 153 ; to Myrtacee, 13; Rubiaceae, 80; Composite, 83; to 
the genus Utricularia, 23, and of the Indian species there is a mono- 
graph in his ‘Illustrations of Indian Botany,’ vol. ii. p. 134. To the 
Apocynacee 64 plates are given ; to the curious but difficult Asclepiadacee 
no less than 72; to Convolvulacee, 44. In Scrophulariacee we find 26 ; 
Labiate, 40; Verbenacee, 32; in the difficult Acanthacee, no fewer 
than 111; Amaranthacee are illustrated by 21 plates; Urticacea, in- 
cluding Moree, by 61; the Aracee, by 42; and the Orchidaceæ, an 
order quite unintelligible to the great majority of botanists without 
accurate plates, by the great number of 171, almost one-tenth of the 
whole work hitherto published. . 
Thus by the labours of one man, more plates illustrative of the flora 
of India have been published, than by all preceding writers taken con- 
jointly. It is true Rheede and Rumphius both published works of — = 
plates, and that many East Indian plants have been noticed by Plukenet; 
but none of these can be depended on; the drawings are often so dis- 
torted that they—witness the plates, or even the order to which they 
belong, of Rumphius—can only be made the subject of unfruitful 
guesses; while the dissections, on which botanists chiefly rely, tend 
only to deceive. We therefore again congratulate the public on the 
appearance of this work, which we learn is to be completed by the fifth 
volume. 
We expected that the author himself might have been amongst us in 
