160 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
of natural history will make advances commensurate with our extended. 
knowledge of plants. Our present number will be found to contain 
about four hundred illustrations, embracing two hundred genera of the 
Leguminosæ, being only h e number of the Order, as enumerated 
in Endlicher’s Genera Plantarum :—a circumstance partly due to the 
entire absence either of the fruit, or of any figures of the same in works, 
to which latter recourse has been had when the former has failed ; 
and to this circumstance, also, any want of extended dissections of the 
fruit and seed is to be attributed ; and in most instances the authority 
for the figure thus quoted has been given.” 
Such are Mr. Ralph’s motives for undertaking the work, and such, 
in few words, the nature of the work. The author has performed 
what he promised, and a very useful volume is here offered to the 
student of Carpology, which we trust will meet with encouragement 
from the public. As many of the figures are professedly copied 
from other publications, their correctness or otherwise depends much 
on the fidelity of the original plates. We could have wished, 
unless the uen were prepared with such a mass of materials at his 
command as to warrant him in publishing in consecutive numbers, à 
general work on Carpology, that it had been made a Supplement to 
the admirable work of Gaertner, omitting assuredly all copies from 
Gaertner's figures, unless with a view of improving upon them or cor- 
recting them, which we cannot find, is the case. Indeed, neither the 
execution, nor the amount of analysis, especially of the parts of the seed, 
is on a par with botanical engravings of the present day; but often 
scratchy, and imperfectly printed. The industry of the author will be 
the remedy for this in his continued practice; since both the drawings 
and the lithographs are executed by himself. 
Botanical Society, April 13th, 1849, 
J. E. Gray, Esq., F.R.S., President in the Chair. Dr. Mitchell, of 
Nottingham, and F. Dickinson, Esq., of London, were elected members. 
| . Taylor exhibited specimens of Anemone ranunculoides, L., 
from the old station at Abbots Langley, Herts. 
Mr. George Maw presented a specimen of Linaria supina, Desf., 
discovered by him at St. Blazey's Bay, Cornwall, in March last. The 
continuation of Mr, Woodward's paper on the Flora of Gloucestershire 
was read. 
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