HENFRETS BOTANY. 73 



without the attention being diverted from the more strik- 

 ing features of the subject by details comparatively unim- 

 portant." 



The work is divided into four parts. I. Morphology or 

 Comparative Anatomy ; treating, in successive chapters, 1st, of 

 General Morphology ; 2d, of the Phanerogamia, or the parts 

 of Flowering plants and their modifications, and the laws 

 which regulate them ; 3d, Morphology of the Cryptogamia. 

 Part IT. Systematic Botany ; treating, 1st, of the principles of 

 Classification ; 2cl, of systems of Classification, and 3d, Sys- 

 ternatic Descriptions of the natural orders, followed by an 

 artificial analysis. Part III. Physiology ; comprising, 1st, 

 the physiological Anatomy of plants ; 2d, general considera- 

 tions on the Physiology of plants ; 3d, Physiology of Vege- 

 tation ; 4th, the Reproduction of plants ; 5th, Miscellaneous 

 phenomena, under which are ranked the evolution of heat in 

 plants, luminosity, and movements of plants. Part IV. Geo- 

 graphical and Geological Botany, very summarily disposed 

 of in about forty pages. 



It seems strange at first to interpose systematic botany 

 between the morphological and the physiological ; but if the 

 anatomy and physiology of plants are to be completely dis- 

 joined from the study of the organs of the plant as a whole, the 

 present arrangement is perhaps as good as any. It is adopted, 

 as the preface shows, for the convenience of instructing medi- 

 cal students, who compose the principal part of classes in Great 

 Britain as well as on the Continent ; — for whom " one short 

 course of lectures is devoted to this science, and three months 

 is commonly all the time allotted to the teacher for laying the 

 foundations and building the superstructure of a knowledge 

 of botany in the minds of his pupils, very few of whom come 

 prepared even with the most rudimentary acquaintance with 

 the science." But the author remarks that " if the previous 

 education of medical students prepared them, as it should, 

 with an elementary knowledge of the natural sciences, we 

 should make physiology the most conspicuous feature of a 

 course of botany in a medical school." 



While in England botany is scarcely an academical study, 



