833 



Notices of New Books, Sfc- 



* The Earth, Plants and Man : Popular Pictures of Nature. By 

 Joachim Frederick Schouw. Translated from the German, 

 by Arthur Henfrey. London : Bohn. 1852.' 



Schouw is one of the most learned as well as most pleasing of 

 phytological writers ; exactly, indeed, that kind of author who, in 

 this country, would be pooh-poohed by our exclusives, as making 

 science far too attractive and popular. It is a curious fact, that our 

 magnates conceive there is a certain dignity in confining knowledge 

 to channels which they themselves shall shape out ; and they regard 

 all other channels of information as vulgar, and unworthy their notice. 

 Even the smallest of the small fry of scientific exclusives, those whose 

 germination, to speak phytologically, has scarcely commenced, whose 

 ascending plumule is scarcely visible, and whose radicle is wholly 

 wanting, still turn up their noses scornfully at everything that may 

 tend to popularise, or, as they deem it, vulgarise, science. They are 

 either oblivious or ignorant of the immutable axiom, that there is no 

 aristocracy in science, except the aristocracy of the mind. This 

 wretched spirit is retarding, instead of advancing, knowledge ; is 

 impoverishing, if not ruining, our societies; and settles like an incu- 

 bus on the inquiring and energetic spirits of the youth who, year 

 after year, enter the fields of Nature, full of hope and enthusiasm. 

 Luckily, Schouw is not a Briton ; and therefore his works may be 

 read, and even admired, without fear of incurring the displeasure of 

 the exclusives; and the ' Phytologist' will be pardoned for intro- 

 ducing " extracts " which, as " original communications," and written 

 by an Englishman, would be held derogatory to the character of a 

 scientific journal We believe Schouw is a German by birth, although 

 a Dane by adoption ; and he holds the Professorship of Botany in 

 the University of Copenhagen. His works are, we believe, invariably 

 written in German and Danish ; and those who are well acquainted 

 with both languages, seem to regard the German as the better ver- 

 sion of the same ideas. The work before us is translated fi-om the 

 German, by Mr. Henfrey, who may truly be called one of our most 

 industrious and painstaking botanists ; and his share of the task is 

 admirably executed. Having thus explained that the following pa- 

 ragraphs are from the German of Schouw, as translated by Henfrey, 

 VOL. IV. 5 o 



