PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



lications, this text-book is indispensable for those who would follow 

 up this important branch of the science. It has evidently been 

 worked up throughout with a thorough knowledge of the subject, 

 and supersedes the necessity of my entering into any details of the 

 rapid advance which has been established in various parts of the 

 field. It requires, indeed, but little comment on the present occa- 

 sion. The title may, perhaps, be too comprehensive. Great as are 

 the questions here treated of, they do not constitute the whole of the 

 science. Geographical botany is passed over in silence, and homo- 

 logies and affinities are scarcely touched upon. Very little indeed 

 is said of systematic botany in general — that branch which, because 

 it was once falsely supposed to constitute botany par excellence, is 

 now held in utter contempt by too many German physiologists, 

 notwithstanding the fresh value imparted to it by the application of 

 the theory of evolution. Even the short article devoted to the 

 methodizing of Angiospermous Dicotyledons had better have been 

 omitted, as it needlessly adds one more to the numerous systems 

 which have been only proposed to be abandoned. It is very easy to 

 find fault with the Candollean arrangement, but very difficult to 

 substitute a better one ; and Julius Sachs's five classes are certainly 

 no improvement on De Candolle's three or four. The weU-known 

 objections to the Monochlamydeae and to the Calyciflorse may be 

 perfectly justifiable ; but they are scarcely improved by raising a 

 portion of the former into two great primary classes, or by re- 

 modelling the latter so as to exclude Saxifragese and include 

 Thymeleae and Proteaceae. Various other proposed approximations 

 or severances, the exclusion from all classes as incertce seclis of some 

 sixteen or eighteen orders, such as Polygonese, Santalacese, Loran- 

 thacese, Picoideae, &c., and the total omission of others, such as 

 Connaracese, Vochysiaceas, &c., are sufficient to show that inno- 

 vation has been attempted without that practical study of the plants 

 themselves which could alone have justified it. These observations, 

 however, are by no means intended as any disparagement of the 

 whole work, but merely as a guard against the notion that there is 

 no science in botany, except in the physiology of plants. 



There is one part of Sachs's book which is an illustration of a 

 very common readiness to take at once as proved any paradox or 

 theory opposed to general belief, when a new discovery appears to 

 afford some plausible argument in its favour. In the article Lichens, 

 p. 266, he adopts as an established fact Schwendener's view that 

 Lichens are Fungi parasitical upon Algae. This reminds me of the 



