BoranicaL LITERATURE, OLD AND NEW. 
III. 
A Flora of North America : Containing Abridged 
Descriptions of all the known Indigenous and 
Naturalized Plants growing north of Mexico : 
Arranged according to the Natural System. By 
Jobn Torrey, M.D., F. L. S., &c. * * and Asa Gray, 
MD '* New York: * * 1838—1843. 
Harvard's Botanic Garden and its Botanists. Ernest 
Ingersoll, in Zhe Century Magazine, xxxii, pp- 
237—248. (1886). 
To critical students of North American phanerogamie 
botany, the two volumes of Torrey and Gray above named 
are destined long to remain, what since their publication they 
have always been, the most indispensable of books. We have 
once or twice already publiely, but incidentally, adverted to 
their great value as an aid to the clear identification and 
exact diserimination of many western genera and species. 
Even the Synoptieal Flora when finished, as we hope it one 
day may be, will be received by those best versed in Ameri- 
ean botany, only as an elaborate supplement to the older 
treatise. Over and above its being carried out to the end of 
the series of phanerogamie natural orders, it will include all 
the genera and species which have become known as inhabi 
ing the given territory, since the year 1843. Very likely it 
may be assumed that, in that new Flora which we are taught 
to regard as only a new edition of the old Torrey and Gray, 
