843 



We cannot but regfet that any author should venture to risk a 

 well-earned reputation by carelessness like that we have noticed ; or 

 to palliate carelessness by remarks, which, to speak in the mildest 

 way, will find no response amongst scientific botanists. At the pre- 

 sent day, when the fructification, the venation, the scales of the 

 stipes, and every part of the plant is laboriously studied, and when 

 the fructification and venation have been shown to afford such excel- 

 lent characters for the discrimination of divisions, we cannot be ex- 

 pected to revert to a character often insufficient for ascertaining a 

 variety, and never available for a higher distinction than that of 

 species. 



L. S. T. 



Notice of a ^Manual of British Botany. By Charles Cardale 

 Babington, M.A., &c.' Second Edition. 



The former edition of this work was good — very good. If the use 

 of a comparative teiTa can be allowed after the superlative, this second 

 edition is better. Various small blemishes have been expunged ; and 

 occasional inaccuracies of the former edition are here rectified. Some 

 unsuccessfiil attempts at originality, in framing the descriptive charac- 

 ters, have now given place to more sound views and observations ; 

 which have been taken from other sources, indeed, but which appa- 

 rently have not been adopted without due examinatioiL Among other 

 emendations, we may rank the omission of that trader-like puff" of the 

 author's own wares, mingled with insinuations against the works of 

 preceding authors, which disfigured the Preface to the former edition. 



On glancing through the volume we do not find much that will be 

 new to readers of the ' Phytologist.' The plants which have been dis- 

 covered or recorded for British, since the publication of the prior edition, 

 are duly entered in their appropriate places ; but as almost all of these 

 have been already registered in the pages of the ' Phytologist,' they 

 are not novelties to our own readers. Some dozen or so of addition- 

 al species are either waifs and stragglers from cultivation, as Lepidium 

 sativum and Asperula taurina, — or species not yet sufficiently ascer- 

 tained, as Viola epipsia and Foeniculum piperatum, — or subdivisions 

 of familiar species, as Zostera nana and angustifolia, separated from 

 Zostera marina. A little farther extension is likewise made of a good 



