278 HANDBOOK OF CRYPTOGAMIC BOTANY. 



the venerable author, so lately taken from us, would doubtless have 

 been one of the first to acknowledge that a work bringing the history 

 of the subject down to date has been for several years the most 

 distinct desideratum of the British cr^^iDtogamist. There could be 

 no doubt whatever about the importance of the adequacy, or other- 

 wise, of the treatise which should appear as a successor to 

 ' Berkeley.' The book which is the subject of the present review 

 has, as is known to the initiated, been "threatened" for a consider- 

 able time, and the names of the distinguished botanists who are 

 joint authors have caused its appearance to be anticipated with 

 unusual interest. Those who were familiar with their previous 

 publications must have known that ample knowledge and unwearied 

 research would not be wanting in any production of the two writers 

 who have for a considerable time been co-partners in this particular 

 domain of Science. However, knowledge full even to overflowing 

 does not always carry with it the power of imparting information ; 

 and it would have been quite possible for the work under con- 

 sideration to have been dull or repellent, confused or disproportioned, 

 even though crammed with erudition, and teeming with records of 

 the latest discoveries. 



It is with the greatest pleasure that one finds the ' Handbook ' 

 as excellent in its arrangement and style, in its selection of material 

 and consideration of the actual needs of the student, as it is rich in 

 the results of scientific scholarship. It is not only distinctly 

 superior to any work in the English language purporting to give a 

 general account of the Botany of the Oryptogamia, but it contains 

 information, which will be necessary to any botanist who takes up 

 the separate study of Ferns, Mosses, Alg?e, or Fungi, and which he 

 will find it impossible to obtain elsewhere in so accurate or compact 

 a form. The merits of lucid statement and unambiguous language 

 are not so common or so unimportant as some would suppose. The 

 great German works which form the staple pabulum of most working 

 botanists at the present day, even when they have issued from the 

 Clarendon Press, "done into English by several hands" (and 

 generally after a lapse of several years occupied in the process), 

 can hardly be considered literature. In fact, their pages, bristling 

 with uncouth and unnecessary sesquipedalian terminology, are often 

 absolute torture to those who do not want "something craggy" to 

 break their minds against. 



It is, perhaps, not given to our rough insular tongue to emulate 

 the exquisite transparency of style, the delightfully simple vocabulary, 

 the artistic directness which seizes the exact point of importance, 

 and puts it boldly in relief unencumbered by a crowd of details, the 

 scientific clearness which knows exactly what to say and then says 

 it in words which seem to be the only ones possible for the purpose ; 

 all those qualities, in short, which make Van Tieghem's ' Traitc 

 de Botanique ' the queen among botanical text-books ; but in the 

 present work we have proof that we can at any rate have in English 

 clear arrangement, a due sense of proportion, accurate scientific 

 expression of facts without it being thought necessary to clothe 

 them in cumbrous newly-invented phraseology, and, in addition, a 



