HANDBOOK OF CRYPTOGAMIC BOTANY. 279 



perfectly readable style which conveys with ease to the reader the 

 impression which was in the mind of the writer. 



There is another matter, besides style, in which the present 

 work contrasts very favourably with the productions of the German 

 school. In reading Sachs' ' Lectures,' the last, and in some ways 

 the best of the treatises referred to, it is impossible to restrain a 

 growing sense of irritation at the constant reiteration of self- 

 congratulatory references to the author's previous publications, 

 occasionally coupled with peevish expressions of disgust at the 

 fatuity even of brother-Teutons (French and English work is of 

 course systematically ignored) who have presumed to suppose that 

 they might with impunity differ from the ''Great Cham" of Botany. 

 Messrs. Murray and Bennett err on the opposite side, if at all. 

 Although they have written on the subject with which they now 

 deal for many years, and in several quarters, they make hardly the 

 slightest reference in the 'Handbook' to their previous labours. 

 Murray's 3rd edition of the cryptogamic portion of Henfrey's 

 ' Botany,' Bennett's 4th edition of the same, Murray's articles on 

 Fungi, &c., in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' papers by the joint 

 authors read before the British Association and the Linnean Society, 

 articles in the ' Journal of Botany ' and the 'Academy,' — in these 

 and many other quarters may be found the earliest statements of 

 views which are put forward in the present volume ; and it would 

 have been useful, with regard to questions of priority in nomencla- 

 ture and terminology, if on some occasions they had been freer in 

 the acknowledgment of the debts they owed to — themselves. How- 

 ever, if they are comparatively silent as to their own previous 

 writings, they do full justice to those of others. They claim to have 

 made the attempt to acquaint themselves with the contents of every 

 important pubhcation of recent years bearing on Cryptogamic 

 Botany, and issued in English, French, German, Italian, or Latin. 

 Nor are they satisfied with this general acknowledgment ; a well- 

 selected and valuable bibliography of the British and foreign 

 literature of the subject is attached to each division, while every 

 important order has a minor bibliography of its own, the complete- 

 ness and accuracy of these catalogues of cryptogamic literature 

 forming a very valuable feature of the work, while in the text the 

 discoveries and theories of recent observers are accredited to the 

 proper source with praiseworthy fidelity. 



It would be difiacult, one might suppose, when such a large 

 number of facts and names had to be compressed into a compara- 

 tively limited space, to prevent the pages from becoming as dry and 

 uninviting as those of the ' Nautical Almanack.' But this danger 

 has been guarded against by various devices, one of the most 

 important of which is that of a reformed and comparatively simple 

 system of terminology. Most botanists who have dealt with the 

 Cryptogams will re-echo the statement that "the question of 

 terminology is one of the greatest stumbling-blocks to the student 

 of cryptogamy." Not only are new terms being constantly intro- 

 duced, many of them quite needlessly, or from an erroneous idea of 

 structure, but some that are in continual every-day use are employed 



