353 
GENERA Fror® ÅMERICÆ BOREALI-ORIENTALIS ÍLLUSTRATA: the 
Genera of the Plants of the United States, illustrated by Isaac 
SPRAGUE, with descriptions, §c., by Asa Gray, M.D. 
We announced in our last part the appearance of this second volume of 
the present beautiful work, the first of which we had previously noticed 
in the ‘London Journal of Botany,’ vol. vii. p. 390. e there made 
some extracts from the preface, showing the plans and intentions of - 
the authors. These have been so well carried out in the two volumes 
before us, and the progress of the work (we understand the third volume 
is already far advanced) affords so good a pledge of its steady prosecu- 
tion, that we are induced now to enter into some further details on an 
undertaking, of so much importance, not to American botanists alone, 
but to all those who are in any degree interested in general systematic 
or descriptive botany. 
Since the great increase of the number of the species has rendered it 
a hopeless task to include in one work figures of all known plants, which 
was attempted by many botanists before Linnzus, the great aim has 
been to give representations of at least every genus. This was accom- 
plished in a gréat measure by Lamarck in his ‘ Illustrations,’ attached 
to the French ‘ Encyclopedia.’ But even long before its completion, his 
work, however useful it may have proved, had become quite out of 
date, whether in design and execution, or in point of completeness. 
Since then, the only attempt at a general * Genera Illustrata ' has been 
Endlicher’s *Teonographia, which, however, only reached a hundred 
plates out of above six thousand phzenogamie genera then known. 
It being now clear that such a task is too great for the powers ofa 
single individual, as wellas for the purses of a sufficient number of 
purchasers to give hopes of its being carried through, the plan has 
been still further restricted, and it has been the endeavour to bring 
within manageable limits the genera indigenous to particular botanical 
regions. The example was set for Central Europe by Theodore Nees 
von Esenbeck, in his admirably executed ‘Genera Plantarum Flore 
Germanice ;’? but after having been continued through above 400 
plates, and having been twice abandoned in consequence of the death 
of the authors, and as often resumed by an equally competent successor, 
it appears now to have been finally put an end to by the misfortunes 
and death of the third manager, as well as by the politieal state of 
VOL. I. 2 
