NOTICES OF BOOKS. 285 



anything like a catalogue of works on Economic Botany ; and any- 

 one who has the daily handling of books on the subject, and has to 

 make constant references to the most varied matters that legiti- 

 mately come under this head, must feel thankful for such a help. 



' Vegetable Technology ' does not claim to be exhaustive — 

 indeed no work of the kind could ever be perfect. Mr. Jackson 

 calls it **a contribution towards a bibliography of Economic 

 Botany,' and in his preface he points out that it is only an 

 extension of a list drawn up by two previous workers in the same 

 field, so that he comes before us in this instance rather as an 

 editor than as an author. Mr. Jackson has done most useful work 

 before, in his ' Guide to the Literature of Botany,' and has un- 

 doubted ability for perfecting a work of this kind ; so that we feel 

 sorry he did not find himself justified in considerably increasing 

 the bulk of the present volume and its consequent usefulness. No 

 one knows this better than he does himself, for he refers more than 

 once to the imperfect material that was put into his hands to 

 start with, and to the fact that "a complete bibliography of 

 Economic Botany would need the labour of years." 



Though Mr. Jackson has undoubtedly produced a useful 

 reference -book out of some untrustworthy materials, we wish 

 he could have found time and patience — for a large share of both 

 would have been needed — to have searched, verified, and cited the 

 numerous volumes of the ' Gardeners' Chronicle,' ' Intellectual 

 Observer,' ' Student,' ' Technologist,' 'Journal of Applied Science,' 

 and others, even though, as he says, he could not confidently 

 assert correctness in the statements given in the two last-named 

 journals. We should have liked a full enumeration of the various 

 papers on economic botany published in the series of journals 

 edited by Sir W. J. Hooker ; similarly we think such papers as 

 those which Dr. Hance has contributed to these pages upon plants 

 used in China should have found a place. On the other hand, 

 many of those cited from the ' Pharmaceutical Journal ' might well 

 have been omitted. 



We think Mr. Jackson has done right, in excluding such 

 subjects as silk and cochineal, because the ramifications of these 

 are so wide that it would be difficult to decide where the line of 

 Botany should be drawn : nor can we blame him for having 

 excluded the bibliography of the vine, which "would requu'e a life- 

 time for its compilation." 



Of course it is not difficult to point out what would be 

 considered omissions if the work were more pretentious than a 

 " contribution" to the subject on which it treats. For instance, at 

 p. 188, under " Shettell, George W.," the following might have 

 been added, "Note on Caoutchouc obtained from Chavannesia 

 esculenta. Rangoon : printed at the Government Press, 1874." 

 Again, in the list of serials, the ' Technologist' is marked as "in 

 progress," whereas it has ceased to exist since 18G6. 



We hope that at some future time Mr. Jackson will find leisure 

 to largely augment the present volume, which belongs to a class of 

 work for which he is peculiarly qualified. J. R. J. 



