BOTANICAL LITERATURE. Int 
eal study is broader than the conjoined breadth of all the 
ground these great books cover. Besides, all men are human ; 
all botanists have habits, bad as well as good, and there is 
always a possibility, and more than a possibility, of one’s 
acquiring bad habits as well as good, by the too exclusive use 
of a few authors, even the best. 
But we trust to show, before having proceeded far in these 
discourses upon books, that it is not quite creditable in us to 
have been so ignorant as we have been, concerning the merits 
of certain works that are rare on American library shelves, 
and which few if any of us have ever supposed it worth our 
while to examine. 
We do not intend to give anything like the conventional 
brief review or criticism of even those new books the contents 
of which we may discuss. Our dissertations here shall be as 
long, as varied, and as rambling as our mood at the hour of 
writing may direct. 
But, the reader will observe our caption to be “ Literature, 
Old and New,” not New and Old, thus giving precedence to the 
old. It may be that we shall have more to say about old 
books than new ones. In this, too, we shall follow our own 
mood, yet hoping to be neither tedious nor uninstructive. 
There are really many things in the old books which all of us 
ought to know, the knowledge of which may enlighten and 
assist us. 
i 
Catalogus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascen- 
tium: in quo exhibentur quotquot hactenus tnvente 
sunt, que vel sponte proveniunt, vel zn agris seruníur ; 
una cum synonimts selectioribus, locis — et 
observatioribus quibusdam oppido raris. "Tc Can 
tabrigia, * * * Anno Domini 1660. 
This is a small pocket compend of the botany of the 
