688 



whose beauty those who have only seen it in conservatories can form 

 but an inadequate idea ; nothing can be more charming than the 

 sight of whole groves overspread with the long blue racemes of this 

 creeper ; it almost baffles description. The Palo de buba {Jacaranda 

 Jillcifolia, Don) is another of those plants on which poets delight to 

 try their pen, and painters their brush. When this noble tree rises 

 on the banks of the river, amidst the dark foliage of a luxuriant vege- 

 tation, and waves its large panicles in the air, the foot is involunta- 

 rily arrested, and one gazes for some time lost in wonder and 

 admiration."— Pp. 65—72. 



* Walks after Wild Flowers ; or the Botany of the Bohereens. By 



Richard DowDRN (Richard). London: John Van Voorst, Pater- 

 noster Row. 1852.' 



The title of this pretty little book is a sad misnomer j it is sugges- 

 tive of glorious rambles through mead and forest dell, o'er hill and 

 dale, by lake and river, up mountain height and on old ocean's shore, 

 together with pleasant way-side chit-chat upon the varied floral trea- 

 sures that await the notice of the wandering naturalist ; in short, a 



* Botanical Looker-Out ' adapted to the scenery and localities of the 

 Emerald Isle. Instead of this, however, we have a sort of introduc- 

 tion to the natui-al system of botany; or rather, the first instalment of 

 such an introduction, for either the Irish " Bohereens " possess a sin- 

 gularly fragmentary Flora, or the author must intend, at some future 

 period, to give us a continuation of his book, which now, like 



" Th' adventure of the bear and fiddle, 

 Bep^ins, but breaks ofT in the middle," 



and scarcely there, for we get no further with the wild flowers than to 

 the end of the Brassicaceae, in the method which the author says " is 

 called that of the natural orders in botany;" and which method, he 

 further tells us, is adopted, because his " labour is intended to be more 

 a botanical biography than a systematic production ;" this to us how- 

 ever seems to read very like a non sequitur, a figure of speech which 

 in the vernacular is usually denominated a hull. 



As " a botanical biography " then, so far as it goes, this little vo- 

 lume has our hearty welcome. It is replete with pleasant gossip 

 about wild flowers, consisting of lore learned and unlearned, gleaned 

 from a variety of sources, ancient and modern, in reference to their 



