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XI. Reviews^ and Notices respecting New Booh. 



An Inaugural Lecture on the Study of Botany, read in the Library of 

 the Botanic Garden of Oxford. By Charles Daubeny, M.D.,F.R.S., 

 Professor of Chemistry and Botany in the University of Oxford. 

 1834. 



THE two Universities of this country have exhibited in succession 

 what would elsewhere be considered an anomaly or abuse, — a 

 professorial chair continuing to be held by an individual who gave no 

 lectures. That such a circumstance could be allowed, can only be 

 accounted for by conceiving a general indifference to exist in regard 

 to subjects on which these Professors had been appointed to lecture. 

 That botany should be the branch of science and education so neg- 

 lected must seem strange to every one acquainted with what botany 

 really and truly is, while, in respect to others, the neglect is as easily 

 accounted for as it is merited. That a different fate in both Univer- 

 sities now awaits it, we have no hesitation in avowing our belief. If 

 asked on what grounds we found this expectation, we reply, on the 

 different view which is taken of botany and its objects, and the dif- 

 ferent method pursued in teaching it. The effects of this change have 

 begun to show themselves at Cambridge ; and now, a voice having 

 proceeded from the botanical wilderness at Oxford, every one inter- 

 ested in the progress of the science must feel a desire to know what 

 sounds it will utter, — whether the uninviting language of its prede- 

 cessors, or the attractive strains of sound reasoning and the inductive 

 philosophy. Fortunately, the new Professor has furnished us with a do- 

 cument, — a confession of faith, — from which we may learn his opinions 

 and views. This introductory lecture gives, as all proper introductory 

 lectures should do, an outline of the plan to be pursued in teaching 

 the science, the details of which will be supplied in the subsequent 

 ones, ail of these being a continued comment on the first. The fa- 

 culties of mind necessary to form a botanist are stated at the com- 

 mencement, from which it will be seen that Dr. Daubeny, very cor- 

 rectly, considers him a botanist whose mind is imbued with the great 

 principles, by means of which plants can be collected into natural 

 groups, and who strives to discover the general relation in which these 

 groups stand towards each other, — in short, who labours to construct 

 and perfect a method, " where the very place which a plant occupies 

 in it shall, in a manner, announce its most prominent characters, the 

 qualities it may possess, and its affinities with others." This declara- 

 tion of the Professor of his intention to explain the principles of the 

 natural arrangement of plants has given us sincere gratification, 

 but which suffers some diminution from perceiving that some of the 

 old leaven lurks in his mind, and that he casts a lingering look behind 

 at the fading glories of the artificial system, the nature of which, and 

 its use as a dictionary, he means first to explain. Now, we are of 

 opinion that the juste milieu plan will not be found to answer in bo- 

 tany any more than it does in politics. We do not know what is the 



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