214 Bibliographical Notices. 



bearing date 1870, and the third 1878. There are more than twenty 

 excellent new woodcuts, and, besides minor alterations, the sections 

 dealing with Algse, Protophyta, and the reproduction of Phanero- 

 gamia have been almost entirely rewritten by Mr. Bennett ; but 

 " the general plan of the work has not been materially altered," and 

 it is on this point that we mainly complain. In his original preface 

 Professor Heufrey made the following remarks : — 



" The largest class of students of Botany are those who pursue 

 the subject as one included in the prescribed course of medical 

 education. 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 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 

 featiire of a course of Botany in a medical school." At the present 

 day, while admitting with Professor Huxley that Botany might 

 well be excluded from the medical curriculum, it may bo urged that 

 students entering upon that curriculum should furnish proof of 

 attainments up to the standard of the Preliminary Scientific Exami- 

 nation of the University of London ; and that, after studying some 

 first book of Botany, " Physiology," which to Professor Henfrey in- 

 cluded Histology, might well be the " most conspicuous feature " 

 in their training. In the present work " Physiology " forms the 

 subject of Part III., occupying but 200 pages out of a total of 

 nearly 700, and in it are included both Embryology and Histology, 

 the latter under the meaningless name " Physiological Anatomy." 

 Systematic Botany (Part II.), on the other hand, occupies nearly 300 

 pages, only 170 of which are devoted to the multiform Cryptogamia, 

 whilst the inclusion of such Natural Orders as Dilleniacese, Schizan- 

 dracege, Lardizabalaceae, Cabombaceae, Sauvagesiacea), and such like, 

 in a work which is not complete as a ' Genera Plantarum,' evinces a 

 want of discrimination between a text-book and a book of reference. 

 Surely it would have been better to have made the present work 

 exclusively the former, i, e. a work whose contents the student may 

 hope one day to carry in his head, leaving the other function to 

 such books as Bentham and Hooker's, or LeMaout and Decaisne's, 



The only other regret of a general character that this edition 

 suggests is the absence of bibliographical references. Controverted 

 points are perhaps best omitted from a text-book, and a fact is un- 

 doubtedly of infinitely greater importance than the authority for it, 

 whether ancient or recent. The plan adopted seems to have been 

 to name recent writers only : but surely references to their chief 

 papers, in which more detailed information can be found, would be 

 far more valuable and need not occupy much space. 



The new terminology for the Cryptogamia, proposed by Messrs. 

 Bennett and Murray, is adopted in the latter part of the work, but 

 not consistently used throughout, " oospore " occurring on p. 10 ; 



