PROFESSOR ZUCCARINI. 183 
Oxalis, and the natural family of Cactee ; to the latter belong four 
treatises, in which are described plants discovered by von Martius in 
the Brazils, by Boyer in Madagascar, in Mexico by the Baron von 
Karwinski, or brought back from their travels in the Levant by von 
Schubert, Roth, and Erdl. But Zuccarini’s peculiar skill in the province 
of descriptive and systematic botany, was most beautifully exemplified 
in his publications on the flora of Japan. The distinguished physician 
and naturalist, Ph. Fr. von Siebold, after a sojourn of several years in 
Japan (1824 to 1830), had brought home materials for a vegetable 
history of that eastern island, far surpassing in their extent and scien- 
tific importance all that had heretofore been at the disposal of Cleyer, 
Meister, Kiimpfer, and Thunberg. Not only a rich herbarium, but. 
likewise numerous exact notes, taken on the spot by the zealous tra- 
veller, also communications from a native naturalist and his collec- 
tions, and six hundred sketches and drawings of aie. executed by 
Japan artists, combined to give these materials e value ; 
and they were, moreover, augmented by Dr. un me succeeded 
von Siebold at the factory at Nangasaki. It is more particularly the 
drawings, executed mostly under the immediate direction of von Sie- 
bold, that are prominently remarkable ; for although their style 
reminds us of similar productions by Chinese artists, yet they are 
superior in their greater freedom of design, and a stronger expression of 
those characters, which constitute the foundation of correct systematic 
knowledge. The working out of these most important materials, the 
traveller confided ire our colleague, who performed the part of 
editor with so much care and judgment, that the researches of these 
creditable epoch. This splendidly illustrated work, combining as it 
does elegance with accuracy of design and colouring, and the five 
memoirs published in the Bulletins of our Academy, will ever be looked 
upon as the chief foundation of the flora of that remarkable group of 
islands," ‘The number of phanerogamie species which Zuccarini has 
determined with certainty, is 1650, belonging to 621 genera, and 172 
families. He thinks that the present materials will, on being thoroughly 
examined, yield a total of more than 2,400 species, belonging, perhaps, 
to 700 genera. Of allthe known families of plants there are only 
seventy,—a small number in comparison with the area of the flora— 
which are not represented. A characteristic feature of this flora consists 
