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needy book-makers, for speculative booksellers to advertize and puff 

 into circulation ; but in which the purchaser finds only a title-page 

 ad captandum, a few showy pictures for " illustrations," and a quan- 

 tum of text noticeable chiefly for its plagiarism and imperfections. 



If, however, we subject 'The Tourist's Flora 1 to a third and more 

 searching test, by inquiring whether it can be regarded as a contribu- 

 tion towards the advancement of science, the reply must be in the ne- 

 gative. Progress does not appear to have been within the Author's 

 contemplation ; his object having been to repeat or to re-write the 

 ascertained characters of known plants, and to transcribe the pub- 

 lished descriptions of the less known or the merely book species. 

 The distinctive peculiarity of the work is found in the space of Europe 

 to which it relates, and also in its being a continental Flora writ- 

 ten in the English language ; its merit lies in the well-considered 

 condensation and prevailing precision of its descriptions. True, in 

 various instances, these descriptions are clear and constant only in 

 the printed book, while they are inapplicable and false in the real 

 plants. But we know no living botanist who could avoid making or 

 repeating imperfections of this kind, in attempting to describe all the 

 plants of a space so wide. 



Mr. Woods omits the authority for his nomenclature, by not adding 

 the name of the botanist who first applied the generic and specific 

 names he has adopted for the plants. The practice of using this ad- 

 dition has led to so much falsification of nature, through its ministra- 

 tion to the vanity of species-makers, that we are quite content to feel 

 occasionally the small inconvenience of the omission, rather than be sub- 

 jected to the great and frequent evils of falsification indirectly result- 

 ing from the practice. The Author well meets the difficulty, too, by 

 adding the most needed synonymes in his index, with a reference to 

 the names under which he has described the species ; while, in the 

 body of the work, he quotes directly from the respective writers the 

 descriptions of species which are obscure or doubtful ; adding the 

 writer's name to the description, not to that of the plant. By this 

 plan the compliment becomes one of very doubtful quality; being 

 often and obviously awarded to the obscurity of the describer, or to 

 the falsifying vanity of the species-maker. It may, indeed, be other- 

 wise in some cases, and eventually prove only a just tribute to the 

 acuteness or good fortune of a discoverer. Meanwhile, the plan 

 keeps many suspicious novelties in the category of things to be held 

 doubtful. And if we find the name of any particular botanist re- 



