Botanical Periodicals, 



59 



been figured in any of our periodicals ; and not a few of them, it is generally 

 alleged, have been lost to science, and to the country, after being introduced, 

 from having neither been perpetuated by the press, nor by dissemination 

 among botanical cultivators. Of late, however, since the editorship of 

 Curtis's Botanical Magazine was committed to Dr. Hooker, some plants 

 have been figured in it from Kew ; and we should be most happy to see 

 their number increased. A different policy from that liberality of sentiment 

 and action, which may now be said to pervade almost every private and 

 public establishment or institution of this country, is sure to carry with 

 it its own reward. The names of various other individuals, patrons, and 

 collectors, who have rendered essential service to botany, will occur in the 

 course of our future botanical notices. 



Curtis's Botanical Magazine, and the Botanical Register, have both ma- 

 terially improved within the last year. The Botanical Register, from con- 

 taining most or all of the new plants introduced by the Horticultural 

 Society, from the great care with which its plates are executed, and the 

 judicious remarks on culture and general habit, by Mr. Lindley, is, in con- 

 sequence, the superior publication. We should like to see both of them 

 further improved by their editors' giving the accentuations, derivations, in- 

 dications, and literal English names, in the manner which we have done in 

 the Gardener's Magazine, and in the present work. If we were the public 

 we should insist on this being donej and we rather wonder that Mr, 

 Lindley, whom we know to be infinitely superior to the mean feeling of 

 taking offence at our hints, has not, before this time, adopted these im- 

 provements. 



The most curious plant in the 

 Botanical Magazine is the i4Vum 

 campanulatum (j^g. 27.), which 

 is cultivated in the East Indies, 

 as the yam is in the West, for its 

 root. The rarest plant figured 

 is the Bignonja Colhi, elsewhere 

 noticed, (p. 67.) The common 

 annual globe amaranth has 

 found a place here, as some 

 camellias and picotee carna- 

 tions did in former numbers, 

 which we cannot help regret- 

 ting, as unsuitable to a botan- 

 ical publication of the first rank. ' 



The Botanical Register, besides some beautiful new plants by Mr. 



Douglas, from the N.W. coast of 

 North America, contains theZ)iospyrus 

 Mdbola {fig. 28.), a shrub or small tree 

 from the Philippine Islands, producing 

 a hard, compact, excessively black kind 

 of ebony ; and a fruit, something like 

 a large quince, described as covered 

 with a bright brown coat, which encloses 

 a pink or rose-coloured flesh. Its 

 flavour is said to be agreeable, and its 

 qualities wholesome. There are 'only 

 two plants in England; one at Kew, 

 and the other in the Horticultural 

 Society's garden at Chiswick. The 

 figure in the Register from which 

 ours is copied, is of the quarto size, 

 from a drawing by Mr. Lindley. 



