Juncaginaceous ; the Alisniaceous ; the Palmaceous, includ- 

 ing 58 genera and 3'22 species ; the Juncaceous ; the Phily- 

 draceous ; the Restiaceous ; the Desvauxiaceous ; the Erio- 

 cauloneous. This work is a most useful aid to DeCandolle's 

 Prodromus ; but both dra"- their slow alonof at a rate which 

 IS by no means satisfactory to the public, or necessary as 

 regards the labour of the authors ; especially if we consider 

 the manner in which M. Kunth's labour is performed. An 

 industrious Botanist with the skill of M. Kunth, and a couple 

 of good clerks, would produce four such volumes a year. 



Si/nojjsis Plantariim seu Enumeratio Si/sfematica Plantarimi plernmque adhuc 

 cognitarum cum diferentiis specijicis et synovymis selectis, ad modum 

 Persoonii elaborata auctore Dr. David Dietrich, 2 vol. 8vo. 



One of the most useful books we ever had was Persoons 

 Synopsis PlantarwHy w^hich is now too obsolete to be of any 

 practical value. The man who shall produce such another 

 book will be deserving well of the community of Botanists, 

 for the rate of progress of the works of DeCandolle and 

 Kunth is much too slow to keep pace with the rapidly aug- 

 menting number of systematical publications. Those works, 

 too, contain original views and much new matter, which of 

 itself retards the publication of them, especially of the former. 

 A work of much humbler pretensions, which should merely give 

 what has been published by others, in the language of the 

 authors, and without proposing to correct what others have 

 done, or to add to their investigations, would merely gather 

 together into one place the multitudes of species, good or bad, 

 which swarm in the publications of the present day, would be a 

 most welcome addition to our Botanical literature. It is a 

 mere labour of transcribing, and might be published by an 

 active man in a twelvemonth. When then Dr. David Dietrich 

 announced his plan of republishing the excellent vSynopsis of 

 Persoon, we at least were eager to buy his book ; although, 

 we confess, his adherino- to the old Linnean classification said 

 little for his credit as a Botanist, and was an evil augury as 

 to his undertaking. Yet we thought that he might have been 

 constrained to sacrifice his own views to the auri sacra fames 

 of bibliopolists, and that a good book might still appear, 

 although in masquerade. Indeed, the example of Sprengel 

 and his miserable species plantariim was, in our eyes, a surety 



