^^; Scienii/ic Reviews. 



** Some of them/' he says, " standing in positions where both banks 

 are low, are formed with steep ascents from either end towards the 

 centre. In both these cases the bridges are quite secure in floods 

 from the superabundant water being allowed to escape over the low , 

 end or ends. But let the approach or approaches to the bridge be 

 modernized, by raising the wing- walls and banking up the road- 

 way, as has unfortunately been done in some instances, and the re- 

 sult must be destruction ; for the flood- water being compelled to. 

 pass through an arch which the builders never intended should 

 contain it, the bridge or its approaches must give way before its 

 pressure." 



Not only the flood, but water-spouts, covered the land with 

 stones and heaps of gravel. Portions of rock, of many scores of 

 tons weight were borne down by the streams. But to gain any 

 correct notion of the effects of the flood on the country, the inquirer 

 must peruse the work itself of our talented author. 



On the whole, this is a production of considerable character, with 

 which, though we have some faults to find, we have no real subject 

 of complaint. It is illustrated by a very great number of engrav- 

 ings, some of which, like many pages of the work, do not strictly 

 appertain to the subject. Others, however, illustrate, in a ex- 

 cellent manner, the tremendous effects of the rushing of a mighty 

 stream, which our author, rather irreverently, compares to the force 

 of an eagle sweeping to its prey, (p. 70.) The passage of the Dor- 

 bach is interesting, in this point of view, from the narrow cleft 

 opened in Plate XVI., to the wide expansive channel in Plate 

 XVII., on which the worthy Baronet appears to be gazing with 

 his arms a-kimbo ; and the plates exhibit a transition worthy of the 

 attention of him who denies the influence of water, more especially 

 when assisted by the presence of pebbles and of gravel. There are 

 also interspersed through the book many gloomy Highland tales 

 of fearlessness and courage, of murder in caves, and of that bloody 

 revenge which was characteristic of those countries in olden time. 

 The work thus becomes more readable to those whose curiosity 

 would not be sufficiently awakened by the trying scenes of nature 

 which Sir Thomas Lauder has so well pourtrayed. 



The Genera and Species of Orchideous Plants. Part I. Malax- 

 idex. By John Lindley, F.R.S. Treuttel and Co., London, 

 1830. 



The work before us, by the soi-disant professor of botany in the 

 London seminary for the education of youth, is of a very different cha- 

 racter from that which we had very lately occasion to notice, (p. 181.) 

 That was a wretched production, made up of borrowed plumage,— 

 this, belonging to a branch of botany perhaps one of the most intri- 



