352 Bibliographical Notices. 



tamarind, granadilla, capsicum, mango, sapodilla, quassia, &c. The 

 okra or ochra {Hibiscus esculentns) is an exceedingly common vege- 

 table, the capsules before they are ripe being boiled and made into 

 soup, yielding a large quantity of mucilage which is nutritive and 

 aperient. The sea-side grape (Coccoloba uvifcra) is abundant, and 

 the fruit I have often eaten ; it resembles in flavour a fully ripe sloe, 

 and has a most disproportionately large stone. 



" I have observed here one tree previously unknown to me, which 

 I am told is a gamboge tree yielding a pigment*. Another tree, 

 called Orinogue or Bois immortelle, puzzles me, as I can find no trace 

 of it under either of these names. It grows with amazing rapidity, 

 ,and bears an enormous profusion of leguminous fknvers of a flesh and 

 scarlet colour. These flowers are very thick and substantial in their 

 2)etals, and of a large size, tumbling off the tree in great quantities 

 without ripening their fruit f. 



" I still think the cabbage-palm here is different from that so 

 called in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden." 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 



The Botanical Text-Book. By Asa Gray, M.D., Fisher- Professor of 

 Natural History in Harvard University. 12mo, pp. 413. New 

 York, 1842. 



We have carefully perused this work, and have much pleasure in 

 recommending it to the attention of all students of botany. It gives 

 a comprehensive view of the present state of botanical science, and 

 is written in a clear and lucid style, so as to render it accessible to 

 all classes of readers. It is divided into two parts : 1. an introduc- 

 tion to structural and physiological botany; and 2. the principles of 

 systematic botany, with an account of the chief natural families of 

 the vegetable kingdom, and notices of the principal officinal or other- 

 wise useful plants. The work is illustrated with engravings on wood, 

 which are highly useful to the student. 



In giving a short notice of some of the contents of the work, we 

 shall confine our attention chiefly to those subjects concerning which 

 some differences of opinion exist among botanical writers. 



In speaking of the changes which the leaves of plants produce on 

 the air during day and night, Dr. Gray remarks, — " It is by an en- 

 tirely false analogy that the loss which plants sustain in the night 

 has been dignified with the name of vegetable respiration, and vege- 

 tables said to vitiate the atmosphere, just like animals, by their re- 

 spiration, while they purify it by their digestion. Respiration is 

 merely a part of digestion : in animals it consists in throwing out 

 the excess of carbon which their highly carbonized food contains ; in 

 vegetables it consists in the elimination of the superfluous oxygen of 

 their highly oxidized food." 



* This is probably a Vismia belonging to the natural order Ilyperkacjcc. 

 —J. H. B. 



j- Probably CcesaJplnia pulcherrima, or Barbadoes pride. — J. II. B. 



