DE CANDOLLE'S GJ^OGRAPHIE BOTANIQUE. 67 



Essay. The present commencement of the Flora itself, 

 although comprising only fifteen natural orders, is also an 

 inviting subject for extended comment and almost unqualified 

 commendation. 



DE CANDOLLE'S G^OGRAPHIE BOTANIQUE. 



The " Geographic Botanique" ^ of De CandoUe is not only 

 one of the most important woi'ks of our day, but one which 

 addresses, and will greatly interest, a much broader circle of 

 scientific readers than any other modern production of a 

 botanical author. It is, and probably long will be, the stand- 

 ard treatise upon a wide class of questions, highly and almost 

 equally interesting to the botanist, the zoologist, the geologist, 

 the ethnologist, and the student of general terrestrial physics. 

 To its production the author has devoted no small portion of 

 the best years of his life ; and it bears throughout the marks 

 of untiring labor, directed by a remarkably sound, conscien- 

 tious, and thoroughly systematic mind. Along with the admi- 

 rable methodical spirit which is his by rightful inheritance, 

 the younger De Candolle brings to these investigations a par- 

 ticular aptitude for numerical and exact forms, an intimate 

 acquaintance with general physical science, and considerable 

 ethnological and philological learning ; which last is turned to 

 good account in his chapters on the history of cultivated and 

 naturalized plants. The result in the work before us — even 

 if there were no other claims to the distinction — may fairly 

 be said to go far toward inscribing the name of De Candolle 

 anew in that select list of philosophical naturalists in which 

 his father holds so eminent a position. 



To give some idea of the topics considered in these volumes, 

 and of the order of investigation (which proceeds in an ad- 

 mirable course, from the more simple, general, and better 



* Gt'ographie Botanique raisonnee, ou Exposition des Faits principaux et 

 des Lois concemant la Distribution Geographique des Plantes de VEurope 

 Actuelle. Alphonse De Candolle. Paris and Geneva, 1855. (American 

 Journal of Science and Arts, 2 ser., xxii. 429.) 



