479 



No. 101.— This is the "Supplementary number" to the volume 

 ending with June, 1845. It contains no botanical papers, except in 

 the reports of the " Proceedings of learned Societies," in which we 

 find a short account of Mr. E. J. Quekett's " Examination of some 

 Fossil Woods, which tend to elucidate the structure of certain tissues 

 in the recent plant," from a paper communicated to the Linnean So- 

 ciety. 



No. 102. — "On some species of Cuscuta," by Charles C, Babing- 

 ton. " On the British Desmidieae," by John Ralfs. " On the colours 

 of Leaves and Petals," by William E. C. Nourse. " Observations on 

 the group Schizopetalese of the family of Cruciferae," by J. Marius 

 Barneoud (translated irom the ' Annales des Sciences Naturelles,' for 

 March, 1845). "On the tendrils of the Cucurbitacese," by M. J. 

 Payer (also from the 'Annales,' same number). 



Among these papers we give the preference to that of Barneoud, 

 not only as a valuable contribution to structural Botany, but also from 

 its bearing upon taxonomy. Of late years, unfortunately, there has 

 been an increasing tendency to impose unnecessary difficulties in the 

 way of the student who seeks to acquire a knowledge of plants as in- 

 dividual objects. This is always the starting point of human know- 

 ledge. The first words spoken by a child, with any appreciation of 

 their meaning, are nouns or names of individual objects around him, 

 whether of persons or things. The beginning of Botany, in like man- 

 ner, is to know plants by sight, and to know one kind from another. 

 Doubtless this is an unreasoning kind of knowledge ; but every bo- 

 tanist feels it to be pleasurable in its kind, and it is a needful prelimi- 

 nary to any subsequent process of reasoning in Botany. It is highly 

 desirable that the acquisition of such knowledge should be rendered 

 as easy as possible, without the sacrifice of clearness and precision. 

 This is, however, rendered difficult, not easy, when the distinctive 

 characters of plants are drawn from minute parts. And great confu- 

 sion of ideas can hardly fail to result, when genera and species, which 

 are closely alike in all the more obvious characters, are widely sepa- 

 rated in our systems, through strictly following some one or two almost 

 invisible and arbitrarily selected characters. 



The example which is brought prominently forward in the remarks 

 of Barneoud, will be much less familiar, and therefore less apparent 

 to British botanists, than one taken from our own Flora ; and we will 

 venture upon a few lines of digression, by making some of our own 

 species of Scirpus [Linn.), into precursory examples, before quoting 

 the remarks on Schyzopetalon. Every student of British Botany 



