Reviews and Notices of Books?^ 213 



BotaFij, and Master of the Botanical Drawing Classes in the 

 Department of Science and Art ol the Privy Council for Educa- 

 tion. In this capacity he has frit the want of more copious illus- 

 trations than ordinary botanical manuals supj)ly. lie has accord- 

 ingly endeavoured to supply this want, and lias produced a work 

 which, f >r completeness and beauty of illustiation, has certainly 

 no rival. The work is more particularly devoted to structure, 

 and the physiological remarks are everywhere only secondary and 

 incidental. It is written in the form of simple propositions easily 

 comprehended by the student, and every detail of the structure of 

 plants is copiously illustrated by oiiginal drawings, or by wood- 

 cuts from works of acknowledged excellence. As the work is 

 written for Art students, it has been evidently the object of the 

 author to divest his illustrations of the mere diaivrammatic form 

 which they assume in most works on botany, and in this, we 

 think, he has to a large extent succeeded. To say that all the 

 drawings are of equal excellence would be doing injustice to those 

 which are executed with gieat truth and excellence; but the 

 work, as a whole, stands alone in point of illustration, and must 

 henceforth be the text-book of Art students. We strongly recom- 

 mend this book to artists, as the want of a knowledge of the real 

 structure of plants is an acknowledged desideratum in the produc- 

 tions of many of our first artists. If they attended more to the 

 laws of plant-life, we should not see their paintings so often dis- 

 figured by monstrous, and impossible plants. They would learn 

 here that the general effect of particular groups of plants is pro- 

 duced by their special forms, and that nothing but a knowledge of 

 these forms can enable them to give a true expression to the 

 wondeiful variety of foliage to be formed in nature. — Athenceum. 



Professor HalVs Report on the Geology of Iowa. Vol. I. Parta 

 1 &2. 



We should have noticed some time since these elegant volumes, 

 admirably illustrated, and replete with the results of the applica- 

 tion of Prof. Hall's talent and matured skill to the new res-ions of 

 the west. Iowa is a rectangle of 300 miles by 200, its north line 

 being the parallel of 43^ 30', and its eastern and western bound- 

 aries the two great rivers of the west, the Mississippi and Missouri. 

 It is nearly level and consists principally of prairie land with belts 

 of timber in the river valleys. 



