Fittoris Geology of Hastings. 441 



considerable attention to botany. The copious technical 

 notes invite the reader to botanise as he proceeds, and so 

 understand what he reads about ; but this is surely too re- 

 trospective a business for many readers to engage in ; and, 

 again, it would be more comprehensively done by a diligent 

 use of a good introduction to botany, as Dr. Lindley's. We 

 applaud the lady writer's translation, and think it useful and 

 agreeable, but only to those who both are prepossessed with 

 many botanical conceptions, and have not the means of access 

 to the original work. 



Henslow, J. S-, M. A. Professor of Botany in the University 

 of Cambridge, and Secretary to the Cambridge Philoso- 

 phical Society : On a Monstrosity of the common Migno- 

 nette. 4to, 8 pages and 2 plates. Cambridge, 1833. 

 A separate copy, for private distribution, of the Essay, as 

 printed in the " Transactions of the Cambridge Philoso- 

 phical Society," vol. v. part 1. 



The flowers of the common mignonette, or of any species 

 of ifeseda, will be seen, on observation, to be very peculiarly 

 formed. Analogies in botany are the clues to knowledge, as, 

 when analogous instances are collected, one gathers a prin- 

 ciple that fits the whole of them : this is knowledge, this is 

 power. Well, the flowers of the resedas, or mignonettes, 

 have a structure to which no obvious analogies are known. 

 On this structure Dr. Brown, in the Appendix to Major 

 Denham's Narrative, and Dr. Lindley in his Introduction to the 

 Natural System of Botany, have published opposite views ; 

 and Professor Henslow's paper embraces the points in dis- 

 pute between them, and settles them in favour of Dr. Brown's 

 view. The two were these : — Dr. Lindley considered " the 

 flowers of a ifeseda to be composed of an aggregate of 

 flowers very analogous to the inflorescence of a Euphorbia. 

 Dr. Brown, on the other hand, maintained the ordinary 

 opinion, of each flower being simple, and possessed of calyx, 

 corolla, stamens, and pistil." 



Professor Henslow has portrayed 38 figures of the con- 

 dition of the monstrosity he met with, and described these 

 conditions in detail, and in relevance of the question previously 

 extant. 



Fitlon, William Henry, M.D.V. P.G.S. F.R.S. : A Geo- 

 logical Sketch of the Vicinity of Hastings. 8vo, 100 pages, 

 with a plate and woodcuts. London, Longman, 1833. 

 On the 5th of July we first caught sight of a copy of this 



work, which, although doubtless sent us as soon as published, 



