ool 
dreamer enough to look for a time when America will forbid a 
European war! What a splendid réle this would be for a nation 
to undertake—to send us all to our tents and tell us that we 
may snarl at one another in the length and breadth of Europe 
as much as we please but nothing more, and that if we go further 
she will intervene.’’ And in 1890 he wrote:—‘‘ Bismarck was 
not the only man of blood and iron in Germany; the whole of 
Prussia breathes arrogance, and this chirrupy young Emperor 
will secon be the tool of faction. He evidently has no conception 
of the difficulties and dangers of his position.’’ 
Such are some of the reflections which emerge from a perusal 
of the life and letters of this great man, for great he undoubtedly 
was, great in science, and great in character and achievement. 
It would have been a fitting culmination to an illustrious and 
honourable career if, as was proposed, he had been laid in 
Westminster Abbey beside Newton and Lyell and Darwin; but 
he wished for Kew, where his father was buried; and there, near 
the glades and dells he created, hard by the scene of his life’s 
work, he was laid to rest, full of years, of honours, and of fame. 
Geratp W. EK. Lover. 
Species Blancoanae.*—It is fortunate that the task of a 
critical review and interpretation of Blanco’s Flora de Filipinas 
should have been undertaken by so competent an authority on 
the Philippine Flora as Prof. E. D. Merrill, whose knowledge of 
the vegetation of that archipelago, gained since the year 1902, 
is unrivalled. Just as Rumphius’s Herbarium Amboinense 
~ 
e first edition of Blanco was published in Manila in 1837, 
species of :plants. A second edition containing 1, 32 species 
under Latin binomials, and 27 under native names, appeared 
just after Blanco’s death in April, 1845. Yet a third edition, 
Blanco’s work is not merely a ‘‘ botanical curiosity ’’f as it 
appeared to botanists of the middle of last century. It is the 
work of a man who had neither instructors nor herbaria, and 
whose literature at first was limited to the Systema Vegetabilium 
of Linnaeus! As Prof. Merrill says, “Few botanists in any 
country or in any time have laboured under greater disadvantages, 
and Bianco must be credited with initiative, industry and perse- 
‘verance. Most of the facts recorded are the result of his own 
observation, and if he did make numerous grave errors in interpre- 
* Species Blancoanae; a critical revision of the Philippine species of 
plants described by Blanco and Llanos, by E. D. Merrill; 423 pp. and a map; 
‘nila Bureau of Printing, June 15, 1918. 
+ Hooker and Thomson, Flora Indica, Introd. Essay, 56 (1855). 
