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The Sindent's Flora of the British Idands. By J. D. Hooker, C.B., 

 M.D., etc. etc. London : Macmillan and Co. 1870. (Pp. 5-04.) 



It is only three years ago that Professor Babington published tlie 

 last edition of his ' Manual,' and a second edition of Mr. Bentham's 

 'Handbook' bears date 18G6 ; Dr. Boswell-Syme's great descriptive 

 ' English Botany ' is nearly completed, and there is still a demand for 

 older and less standard books. Yet we have here another claimant 

 for public favour in the already well-trodden path. Dr. Hooker tells 

 us in the preface that the object of h.is book " is to supply students 

 and field botanists with a fuller account of the plants of the British 

 Islands than the manuals hitherto in use aim at giving ;" and, with 

 the view of carrying out this object, he has made use of most of the 

 available sources of information. The last edition of the ' London 

 Catalogue' being taken as a basis for the " number and kinds of plants 

 composing the British Plora proper," very good descriptions — to 

 a great extent original, but compared throughout (except in the 

 Grasses) with Boswell-Syme's — have been added. The indications of 

 area and range of altitude in these islands are extracted from Mr. H. 

 C. Watson's well-known publications (though expressed in the manner 

 adopted by A. Gray, in his ' Manual of the Botany of the Northern 

 United Stales'), and from Moore and Move's ' Cybele Hibernica ;' 

 whilst the extra-British distribution, though in part independently 

 worked out, has been largely supplemented by Mr. H. C. Watson's 

 ' Compendium of the Cybele Britannica.' Dr. Hooker has added 

 estimates of the number of genera in the Orders, and of species in the 

 genera (compiled chiefly from the Kew herbarium), the utility of which 

 woidd be considerable, if we could be sure that such grades were in- 

 tended to have the same value when applied to the plants of the world 

 as is given to them in the ' Student's Flora.' The scientific names are 

 all accentuated, and there are also short indications of the affinities of 

 the natural families, and usually of the etymology of the generic names. 

 Though none of these points are novelties in a British Plora (unless 

 the affinities be so), yet all have not been hitherto combined in a single 

 manual, nor presented in so well-digested a maimer ; the result of so 



