must do, modem attempts to subvert the order of Nature, to harden the soft, and make bold the gentle, 

 forming Amazonian nondescri^jts, fit for parhamentary " eloquence " (save the mark !), or to compose 

 regiments after the pattern of Dahomey, we congratulate our sex heartily that at present they are not likely 

 to be insulted by a dedication such as this, save from a school-boy poet, — certainly not from the learned 

 Cambridge Professor of Botany. " To the Ladies of Great Britain, no less eminent for their elegant and 

 useful accomplishments than admired for the beauty of their persons, this second edition of the following 

 letters is, with all humility, inscribed by the translator and editor." These letters are on the ' Elements 

 of Botany,'' addressed to a lady by the celebrated J. Jacques Rousseau, whose love of Nature found pleasant 

 occupation among plants : pity he was not always as innocently employed, for these letters, with a few 

 modern additions, would still form an excellent elementary work, based on the true principle of beginning 

 with the orgaTiization of plants, instead of merely acquiring names. The French ladies of his day received 

 a far higher education than their EngHsh contemporaries ; yet, even to them, Rousseau thought the subject 

 required some apology for its introduction : — Dated " 22}id Augud, 1771. I think your idea of amusing 

 the vivacity of your daughter a little, and exercising her attention upon such agreeable and varied objects 

 as plants, is excellent, though I should not have ventured to play the pedant so far as to propose it 

 myself." 



The Cryptogamic series of plants are curtly dismissed in the original as too abstruse a subject for 

 common study, and Professor Martyn has added no light, nor even corrected errors in nomenclature, while 

 the conclusion is blandly acquiesced in by Ids giving no kind of comment upon it. Here it is : — " After all, 

 the objects of this Order are not universally allowed to be plants, but are suspected, though seemingly 

 without much reason, to be formed by animals, for their habitation, after the manner of zoophytes or 

 corals. But this is a subject too difficult and nice for our discussion : and perhaps after all the fungi may 

 prove to be one of those Unks in the chain of Nature wliich unite the vegetable to the animal kingdom ; 

 and though they should turn out to be the habitation of minute insects, and to be formed for and by them, 

 yet they may have at the same time the growth and texture of plants." — Letter xxxii., p. 500. 



