BOTANICAL NEWS. 235 
they successfully apply it. Had the binominal nomenclature of species been 
did with his Dissertations. One of the active botanists whom I have named 
was the sole author of a quarto volume which is hightly esteemed in science, 
but, indeed, authors who have their ie vaga well filled ought to be 
the most genero 
“ Active bonba sometimes fall into grave errors. Linné affords a striking 
mple. He would have had difficulty in furnishing proofs of his supposition 
that. the outer bark forms the calyx, the inner bark the corolla, the w he 
stamens, and the pith the pistil; and yet he speaks of this as a fact, and not 
as a hesis. His theory of prolepsis, maintaining the evolution of organs 
d and hidden for five or six years in the interior of the plant, that of the 
origin of all P lanta from a gie nonc region under the equator, and his 
id lants, show more strength of imagination 
than of ‘observation and reason. In general, the more active botanists are 
gifted with — gu the more they fall into error. It was reserved for 
Goethe to show that one could be at once a great poet and a vb. trus ob- 
server. But Goethe has written little in natural history, and had he been a 
professor, having hundreds of students applauding his proposed theories, who 
knows but that he also would have sacrificed exactness to fame?” 
Ferns, British and Foreign ; their History, Organography, Classifica- 
tion, Nomenclature, and Culture, with directions, showing which are 
the best adapted for the Hothouse, Greenhouse, Open-air Fernery, or 
Wardian Case. By John Smith, A.L.S. London: Hardwicke. 1866. 
The extensive Lob Veneri Num Mr. = = dius Ferns, both 
living and in the herbarium, and ontributions 
which he has made to this department of botany pe a long life, 
make a volume, in which he gives his most mature views as to classi- 
fication, and his experiences as to cultivation, alike valuable - the 
hortieulturist and to the botanist. His little * Catalogue of vated 
Ferns,’ published some ten years ago, has grown, under his uel » into 
the present good-sized and complete manual, in which every genus is 
fully described and illustrated by a woodcut, showing de venation 
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