rSO CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



and embracen a comprehensive digest of the most approved informa- 

 tion which foreign and British botanists possess, respecting de.scrip- 

 ivte botany, taxonomy, and phytographi/, and the hitherto strangely 

 neglected science of the laws of the simple and compound organs of 

 plants, considered as living, self-acting, and re-acting beintis. 



How far have not French and German outvied British botanists 

 in special enterprize ? But, what is more to our present purpose, 

 how far, too, have they not left them behind in original and standard 

 authorship ! Instead of aj)pearing as competitors with their conti- 

 nental brethren, the most recent writers in this country are constrain- 

 ed, from the influence of indirect causes arising out of the very diffe- 

 rent conditions of science, and the direction of state patronage under 

 the respective governments at home and abroad, to be little else 

 than their commentators, modifiers, and redactors ! If the opinion 

 just hazarded be incorrectly based, let dissentients compare and 

 judge, and rectify it forthwith, by contrasting the matter and bear- 

 ing of the Theorie elementaire de la botanique, the Organographie, 

 and Physiologi€ vegetaU of the same author, or the spirited and 

 rewarded works of Agardli, Meyer, Mirbel, Runth, and others, 

 with the late productions of English botanists. As journalists, 

 we think that the honor of what is purely matter of impartial judg- 

 ment, never should be sacrificed to false feelings of false nationalism ; 

 we are aware that an able author is lightly, but somewhat incon- 

 siderately, spoken of, by not a few, as slavishly following the 

 steps, and putting too tamely into an English dress, the results of 

 Al. Decandolle's labours as an author, inquirer, and inductive rea- 

 soner ; but we contend that the professors of botany respectively in 

 the Universities of London and Cambridge, have acted wisely, and 

 have best consulted the interests of students by drawing, as both 

 have done freely, from the writings, and also in following out, as 

 they have attempted, the leading suggestions, of the famed and 

 meritorious professor of botany at Geneva. 



Mr. Henslow's work, as a whole, may safely be pronounced a 

 masterly and trust- worthy compilation ; and in as far as we have had 

 leisure to examine its matter, is au couranl with the best informa- 

 tion of the day — with one heavy drawback, however, in the way 

 of an exception. We have reflected with surprise upon the loose 

 and unscientific remarks committed in the paragraph on organized 

 bodies, in the introduction to Part I. ; more especially as no one can 

 be better aware than Mr. Henslow of the baneful and retarding in- 

 fluence exercised upon the views of students in vegetable or animal 

 physiology, by the crude and positively inaccurate notions vulgarly 

 entertained upon the subject of " life." The professor, in preparing 

 and lending the authority of his name to a work intended for the 

 perusal of general readers, surely would not have written of life as 

 *' that mysterious principle" had he borne in mind the continued 

 propagation thus given to loose and decidedly erroneous ideas tend- 

 ing to confound a complex result with a simple elementary force or 

 power ? Every modern physiologist, whose opinion is worth citing. 



