388 Bibliography. 
believe that the compensation allowed the author was too small to per- 
mit him to incur this expense. This should not have been so. The 
commonwealth of Massachusetts, deservedly renowned both heii and 
in foreign countries, for her patronage of science, may justly feel an 
honest pride in counting among her sons, a man adequate to sucha 
task, and she should have granted him the most ample means of illus- 
trating this important work. C. 
10. The Botanical Text Book, for Colleges, Schools, and private 
Students ; comprising, Part I. An Introduction to Structural and Physi- 
ological Botany ; Part II. The Principles of Systematic Botany, with 
an account of the chief Natural Families of the Vegetable Kingdom, 
and notices of the principal officinal or otherwise useful Plants. Illus- 
trated with numerous Engravings on wood. By Asa Gray, M. D., 
Fisher Professor of Natural History in Harvard University, &c. 
The Text Book of Dr. Gray, affords at once the most compendious 
and satisfactory view of the vegetable kingdom which -has yet been 
offered, in an elementary treatise, to the American public. In a style 
remarkable for its correctness and perspicuity, the author has traced 
and unfolded the vegetable structure, from its simplest forms up to its 
most complicated and elaborate developments. He has presented us 
with the first principles of the science, in accordance with the beauti- 
ful and truly philosophical doctrines of Wolfe and Goethe—explaining 
the laws, and illustrating the processes by which the external organs” of 
plants are gradually modified, or metamorphosed, from the crude eoty- 
ledons of the germinating seed, to the most delicate component parts 
of the flower and the fruit. We are thus enabled to comprehend, @ 
the most satisfactory manner, all those curious combinations and sup- 
pressions of organs, those fantastic deviations from symmetry, oF DOT 
mal arrangements of parts, which have hitherto been considered s0 
Symenout, and have so long baffled the sagacity of naturalists. ‘The 
e doctrine of vegetable metamorphosis has, indeed, given to 
the science of botany an entirely new aspect. As our author in his 
felicitous manner observes, “the application of this theory, like the 
touch of the spear of Ithuriel, causes the most anomalous structures and 
disguised forms of vegptahle organization, to reveal their typical state 
a. irimitive character.’ 
‘ith this Text Book in their hands, the teachers of botany in our 
seminaries my speedily elevate the study to its legitimate rank among 
