229 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
. Manual of Botany: being an Introduction to the study of the 
a Physiology, and Classification of Plants; by J. H. BALFOUR, 
., Professor of Botany ir in the University 
oF Edinburgh. Joddon: nil Glasgow, 1842. 
. The Botanical Text-book, Yor the use of colleges, schools, and private 
students: comprising, Part I., an Introduction to Structural and 
Physiological Botany, and Part IL, the Principles of Systematic 
Botany ; by Dr. Asa Gray, Professor of Natural History in Har- 
vard University, third edition, New York, 1848. 
We have had occasion to speak of Dr. Lindley’s Introduction to 
Botany, and his Vegetable Kingdom, as, together, constituting the 
fullest and most perfect elementary work on botany that ever has ap- 
peared, alike honourable to the author and to the country that gave 
him birth; and it may be said that subsequent introductory publica- 
tions on the same subject, however they may vary on minor points, are 
good or indifferent, according as they are wrought after this incom- 
parable model. It has been the aim of more than one able botanist 
to condense such a vast mass of matter as has been here comprehended, 
in two large octavo volumes,* of more than 1800 pages, and to consti- 
tute a portable volume, more especially destined for a class book. Nor 
is the labour of preparing such a work light or the task easy; but it 
has been successfully accomplished by two well known professors of 
botany in a most satisfactory manner, and in a way which cannot fail 
to recommend the authors as most competent teachers, the one in the 
United States, the other in the capital of Scotland. 
Dr. Asa Gray of the Harvard University, Massachusetts, has 
published the second edition of his Botanical Text-book, in 1848, for 
colleges, schools, and private students; but as we had occasion else- 
where to give this our unqualified praise on the appearance of the first 
edition, we mention the present one only incidentally ; and now very 
recently has appeared the Manual of Botany, by Dr. Balfour, Professor 
of Botany in the University of Edinburgh. In the execution of the 
numerous woodcuts, we regret we must give the preference to the 
* Our botanical readers cannot fail to know that the fourth edition of Dr. Lind- 
ley’s Introduction to Botany, in two ey appeared in 1848; and a second edition 
of the Vegetable Kingdom, was called for and prepared almost immediately on the 
2 of the first: a crowning proof of the value of the book in general public 
mation 
wo 
