33 



NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



Memorials, Journal, and Botanical Correspondence of Charles Car dak 

 Bahington, M.A., F.Ii.S., F.L.S., &c. Cambridge: Macmillan 

 & Bowes, 1897. 8vo, ]Dp. xciv, 476 (two portraits). 



This admirably printed volume is fitly termed "Memorials." 

 It contains the materials for a biography rather than the biography 

 itself. Mrs. Babington, to whose loving ca.re the work is due, 

 modestly refrains from placing her name on the title-page, and 

 contents herself with signing her initials to the preface, and to the 

 short " envoi" which follows the Journal. Her view has been to 

 present under the three heads indicated in the title the various 

 aspects of Babington's life ; and although we may regret that she 

 did not see her way to embodying these in one narrative, we cannot 

 but respect her preference for this mode of treating her subject. 



Taking these subjects in order, we find in the first place a 

 memoir by Babington's intimate friend, Prof. J. E. B. Mayor, 

 with notes giving much information as to the various botanists 

 and others incidenta^lly mentioned therein. Prof. Mayor was so 

 thoroughly in sympathy with Babington, not only in his learned 

 and scientific tastes, but also in his sincere and earnest though 

 limited views of religious truth, that his appreciation is justly 

 entitled to the position which it occupies in the volume, giving 

 as it does a comprehensive survey of the late botanist's life and 

 character. One sentence — " a still career, all of one piece, has few 

 landmarks " — seems to convey a better idea of Babington's life, as 

 it appeared to the outside world, than its definition in the preface 

 as "many-sided" and "varied in its interest"; but as to this 

 more may be said when his Journal comes under consideration. 

 Among the other memoirs, or " reminiscences," as they are termed, 

 are two of more especial botanical interest — the sketch which ap- 

 peared in this Journal for September, 1895, and one on Babington's 

 work among British Rubi, by Mr. J. E. Bagnall, which has not, we 

 believe, been previously published. The former of these is the only 

 attempt which has been made to appreciate as a whole the work of 

 the late Professor as it affected the English flora. The other 

 reminiscences are of various kinds, and include letters of sympathy 

 written at his death, which, however consoling to the recipient, 

 can hardly be said to add to our knowledge. They end with a 

 memorandum, hardly in place here, which Babington addressed to 

 the Senate in 1881 against the proposed opening of the Botanic 

 Garden on Sundays. 



The Journal, which is prefaced by a curious portrait of Babington 

 at the age of seventeen — the admirable portait taken in later life 

 was, through the kindness of Mrs. Babington, reproduced as a 

 frontispiece to the last volume of this Journal — begins (after a 

 short autobiographical notice) on Nov. 2, 1825, and ends Sept. 10, 

 1891. As a whole, and regarded from a literary standpoint, it cannot 

 be said to have been worth printing. There are of course interesting 

 notes of rambles taken with byegone botanists who did much to 



Journal of Botany. — Vol. 36. [Jan. 1898.] p 



