NOTICES OF EOOKS AND MEMOIRS. 307 



native Phanerogams than some smiilar periods within the memory 

 of hving botanists. This is due not to botanists being less 

 numerous or less keen, but to botanical work being diverted into 

 other channels. There is an increasing class of cryptogamic 

 specialists, esiDecially of mycologists ; the facility of foreign travel 

 leads to much attention being paid to exotic plants which was 

 formerly devoted to our own flora ; but above all there is a 

 new school of botanists rising, to whom the systematic study of 

 British plants is quite uncongenial. In place of the old-fashioned 

 botanizing in the field and the study of ordinal, generic and specific 

 characters and differences, which have hitherto been the grammar 

 of botany to English students and formed the foundation of the 

 knowledge of very nearly all the leading botanists in this country, 

 the young student now substitutes a course of reading about in- 

 vestigations in development, histology, and growth which have 

 been mainly carried out in the laboratories of other countries, and 

 indulges in speculations on evolution and the acquirement of 

 distinctive characters. It is unnecessary to express here any 

 opinion as to the general results of this change. It is probable 

 that in the future it will become still more marked ; and the class 

 of " good British botanists," of whom Watson, Borrer, Boswell and 

 Babington may be cited as examples, is scarcely likely to be ever 

 again so strongly and prominently represented as it has been. 



The eminent author of the present text-book was never one of 

 that fraternity ; his work has been of a far wider scope. Hence 

 one does not expect, in a new edition of the ' Student's Flora,' to 

 find the amount of work and alteration which has made each 

 successive edition of Babington's * Manual ' so interesting to the 

 student of our native plants. Accordingly, beyond the intercalation 

 of the additional species found to be British since 1870, and a 

 general but slight revision of the text, there is little alteration in 

 the book, and from the author's point of view no more could be 

 required. The plan and general execution of the ' Flora ' were all 

 that could be wished, and no changes of a comj)rehensive character 

 were needed. But more care might well have been expended on 

 details, and especially on proof-correcting. Many of the numerous 

 slips are no doubt due to haste, but one does not expect in a 

 second edition to see those of the former one reproduced to so 

 great an extent as is here the case. All the following (and many 

 more might be cited) have been handed on from the first edition. 

 Linn, is still given as the authority for Erojjhila verna and Nuphar 

 luteum. The description of the fruit of Sambucus is singularly 

 incorrect, and that of Daphne Laiireola is called a drupe, whilst 

 Z>. Mezereum is termed a berry. Coniiim has not a constricted com- 

 missure, and the general involucre of Carum Cariii frequently 

 consists of four or five leaves. The common Yarrow has not an 

 elongate receptacle, nor has the fruit of Lactuca virosa a "■ cellular 

 wing," whatever that may be. Orohanche carulea has four not five 

 calyx-lobes; under Atriplex laciniata "cuneate" seems to be a mis- 

 print for connate, and under Triticum caninum "2-5-awued" for 

 2-5 -nerved. Such things are very misleading to the student, and 



