Greville^s A.'lgce Britdnnicce. $7 



houses, and continuing to do so till the Birmingham riots drove Priestley 

 to Northumberland in the United States." (p. cxxvi.) 



If our limits permitted, we could give many extracts which 

 would instruct and delight our readers; and which would 

 show that the study of the minutest objects in nature can fill 

 the mind with pleasure, and animate it with an ardour and 

 benevolent feeling which the philosophy of the world laughs 

 at and scorns. Our venerable author is not one of those 

 described by Wordsworth, — 



" A prying slave, 



Who peeps and botanises upon his mother's grave." 



Art. III. A'IgcB Britdnnicce / or, Descriptions of the Marine and 

 other inarticulated Plants of the British Islands belonging to the 

 Order hUgm ; with Plates illustrative of the Genera. By Robert 

 Kaye Greville, LL.D. &c. Edinburgh, 1830. 



With the exception of Dr. Hooker's Monograph of the 

 Jungermcinnisd, there has appeared, during the present cen-- 

 tury, no work in any department of British botany which can 

 be compared with the one before us in point of scientific know- 

 ledge and originality. It is, unlike the Floras which have of 

 late Issued from the press, no hasty composition, but the result 

 of the personaj, inyestigation, continued for several successive 

 years, of its gifted and zealous author, who has patiently 

 watched the habits of most of our species on their native 

 rocks, and marked diligently their progress, from their Erst 

 appearance to their present state ; and it treats of a class of 

 plants hitherto imperfectly known, and yet than which there 

 is none more interesting, whether we consider the variety of 

 their forms and colouring, or the peculiarities of their station 

 and structure, or the inlpoi:tant part which they play in the 

 economy of nature. , .' 



Dr. Greville introduces his readers to the systematic part 

 of his work by an essay of considerable length and heteroge- 

 neous character. It contains an outline of the scientific history 

 of algology, too brief to be either interesting or instructive; a 

 general view of the geographical distribution of the inarticu- 

 lated ^Igse'; a plea for those who devote themselves to the 

 study of marine botany, or rather of plants in general, which 

 seems to us somewhat irrelevant ; and concludes with a full 

 and interesting account of the economical uses of the tribe. 

 To all this there can be no possible objection ; but we think 

 something better, or rather something additional, might have 



