62 THE JOUR>'AL OF BOTANY 



but a small affair, had not been as yet appreciated b}^ British botanists, 

 and broad generalizations were still wanting. To cut the types down 

 to one per order, in the manner of Daniel Oliver (Lessons in Elemen- 

 tary Botany, 1864: Illustrations of the Principal Natural Orders 

 of the Vegetable Ki7igdom, Oliver and Fitch, 1874 — 102 Flowering 

 Plants, plain or coloured), was the next stage of more strictly educa- 

 tional work ; but Baxter deserves to be credited with the first step, 

 made under conditions of minimum equipment. 



Many of the figures attain a high order of merit, those by 

 Russell being the more elegant in design ; many British weeds are 

 beyond much decorative treatment ; as examples of the work at its 

 best mav be noted RusselFs figures of Glaucium (131), Caltha (153), 

 Foxglove (113), Columbine (221), Linnaea (340), Rubia (185), 

 Inula (265), Cyclamen (505) ; or the Hop (342), Ash (382), 

 Martagon (501) of Matthews. Much of the coloured work is an 

 improvement on Sowerby's JEnylish Botany ; the more detailed 

 dissections and schemes of floral pai-ts are often extremely good 

 (cf. Lemna (424)^ Alnus (193), Carpinvs (234), Oak (371), Castanea 

 (485) : these, though small, are preferable to the coarse work of 

 Fitch in Oliver's types of orders, and are on a plane quite different 

 from the current issue of The Camhridge British Flora. The text 

 presents no special novelty beyond local records, being a compilation 

 from existing literature ; but it undoubtedly packs far more into the 

 regulation two pages than any other flora, and is still useful as a 

 store-house of odd points of interest culled from ancient liteniture. 

 Older reviews of the work state the same facts : " The plates equal in 

 excellence to any that have been published, and the letter-press far 

 superior to that of most British Floras" (Loudon. 1835) ; "One can 

 hardly name a more suitable present for a young person " (Gard. 

 Chron. 1843). Above all the work was distinctly cheap and of honest 

 value : cf. Maund's Botanic Garden, 4 coloured plates (small) 1/G 

 a month : Sowerby's English Botany, cheap-edition, 2/- a month : 

 Curtis's Botanical Magazine, 8 plates, 3/6 a month : the Botanical 

 Register, 8 plates, 4/- a month : Paxton's Magazine of Botany, 

 8 plates, 5/- a month. The special character of the work is its steady 

 output, continued over a number of years on the part of quite a few 

 people ; as the product of a small university town, it in many respects 

 runs parallel with the sixteenth-century work of Fuchs and his men. 

 Baxter's draughtsmen were similarly non-botanical artists to begin 

 with, and the improvement in their work is very marked. Many of 

 the plants are identical, and it is interesting to compare the similarity 

 of treatment — e. g.. Strawberry, Iris, Oxalis, Coltsfoot, Dais3^ If 

 the work does not appear more remarkable as a novelty in Botany, it 

 is because the framework of the design was too rigorously based on 

 the subscription -principle and the vogue of the day. The detailed 

 description of a suitable series of types of common plants, in handy 

 form, similarly arranged as a sequence through the families, is still a 

 desideratum, apparently beyond the efforts of British Botany. 

 Although not included in Prof. F. W. Oliver's The Makers of British 

 Botany (1913), Baxter in common with many other worthy botanists 

 (as Borrer, Dawson Turner, Greville) has a niche in its history and 



