2 REVIEWS. 



wonder as did Dr. Torrey's edition of Lindley's " Introduc- 

 tion to the Natural System of Botany." Now we can hardly 

 believe that either the author or the American editor of the 

 work referred to were ever in danger, as was honest Dr. 

 Faustus, of being burned for witchcraft, neither do we find 

 anything in its pages calculated to produce such astonishing 

 effects, except, perhaps, upon the minds of those botanists, if 

 such they may be called, who had never dreamed of any 

 important changes in the science since the appearance of 

 good Dr. Turton's translation of the " Species Plantarum," 

 and who speak of Jussieu as a writer who " has greatly im- 

 proved upon the natural orders of Linnaeus." ^ We have no 

 hesitation, however, in expressing our conviction that no 

 single work has had such a general and favorable influence 

 upon the advancement of botanical science in this coun- 

 try, as the American edition of Dr. Lindley's Introduc- 

 tion to the Natural System. This treatise, however useful, 



1 Dr. Lindley is quite right in his remark that the chief difficulties the 

 student has to encounter in the study of botany, upon the principles of 

 the Natural System, have been very much exaggerated by persons who 

 have written upon the subject without understanding it. To refer to a 

 single instance. In the fifth edition of the Manual of Botany, by Mr. 

 Eaton, an account of the Natural Orders of Jussieu is given, in which the 

 genera Ambrosia and Xanthium are referred to Urticece ; and in a note it 

 is added, " Some botanists place the last two genera in the order Corym- 

 hiferce also in the Linnjean class Syngenesia. I see no good reason for 

 these innovations." Now Linnjeus, in his artificial arrangement, certainly 

 did place these genera (and also Parthenium and Iva) in Monoecia Pen- 

 tandria ; but tlie innovator in this instance is Jussieu himself, who never 

 referred these two genera to Urticece, but places tliem in his order Corym- 

 hiferm (Compositce), where they truly belong. The descriptions of Natu- 

 ral Orders in Eaton's Manual, purporting to be taken from Jussieu, bear 

 a very remote resemblance indeed to the ordinal characters of the admi- 

 rable Genera Plantarum of that author, while the occasional criticisms 

 on its supposed errors afford the clearest proof that tlie work was not 

 understood by the author alluded to. It should be recollected that, pre- 

 viously to the reprint of Dr. Lindley's Introduction, Mr. Eaton's Manual 

 was the only work professing to give a view of the Natural System 

 within the reach of the great majority of the botanical students of his 

 country, excepting, perhaps, the American edition of Smith's Grammar 

 of Botany. 



