362 On the Doctrine of 



tectural decoration has happily acquired all the dominant 

 power of fashion, so that no extensive plan of building is now 

 undertaken, in any principal part of the town, withoat some 

 regard to external appearance. If this sudden fashion should 

 happily not pass away with other ephemeral caprices, we may 

 expect, in the course of a few years, to see the time arrive 

 when an Englishman need not feel a sense of shame whilst 

 conducting a stranger through the capital of his country. 



De Plantarum, prcesertim Crypto gamicaruin. Transitu et 

 Analogid, Commentatio. Autore Theophilo Gulielrao 

 Bischoff. 8vo. Heidelberg. 1825. 



The author of this work is one of a modern school of natu- 

 ralists who maintain that all nature is divisible by some de- 

 finite number, and that the many schemes that have been in- 

 vented for classing natural beings, with a view to discovering 

 the mutual relation which they bear to each other, must be 

 tried by their conformity to this fact, which thus becomes 

 the '' lapis Lydius" of natural history. 



We believe that these ideas, in modern times at least, ori- 

 ginated with Dr. Oken, professor of natural philosophy at 

 Jena, who, in his Lehrbuch der Naturfhilosophie, published 

 in 1809-10, after dividing plants into two great divisions, 

 viz. Cellular es and Vasculares, finally declares, that, for 

 physiological reasons, the number four is that to which all the 

 divisions of the vegetable kingdom are reducible. As the 

 opinions of Oken are little known in Great Britain, and as 

 they evidently form the basis of subsequent similar botanical 

 speculations, we shall preface the remarks we may have to 

 make upon Mr. Bischolf's treatise, with a brief exposition of 

 Oken's theory, which we entreat our readers to consider as 

 seriously as it deserves. 



According to this author, legitimate principles of the clas- 

 sification of plants can be derived from no other source than 

 a consideration of physiological structure ; or, as he expresses 

 it, ** of the organs of the anatomical system." Considered 

 in this view, vegetation divides, firstly, into plants, of which 

 the substance consists wholly of parenchyma (^cellular es)\ and, 

 secondly, into those provided with woody fibre in addition 

 (vasculares). Of these, the cellulares are developed under 

 the form of root, leaves, stems, and fruit ; but the vasculares 

 exhibit one higher degree of evolution, in- the flower. Naw, 



