NATURE 



217 



THURSDAY, JUNE 27, i{ 



HENFREY'S BOTANY 

 An Elementary Course of Botany, Structural, Physio- 

 logical, and Systematic. By Arthur Henfrey, F.R.S. 

 Third Edition by Maxwell T. Masters, M.D., F.R.S., 

 &c. 'Illustrated by 600 woodcuts. (London : Van 

 Voorst, 1878.) 



IN reviewing a work of this kind, by acknowledged 

 masters of science, the question naturally comes 

 to the front : For what special class of students is it 

 intended ? and when this has been settled, a second ques- 

 tion : Is the plan which has been adopted the best con- 

 ceivable for the purpose ? The first of these questions 

 appears to be answered in the preface, by the editor's 

 quotation and adoption of Prof. Henfrey' s remarks, written 

 in 1857, where he makes special reference to the needs of 

 medical students, who seldom devote to the study of 

 botany more than the summer term of their first session. 

 As to the mode, Dr. Masters also refers with approval to 

 Henfrey' s plan of keeping the anatomical and physio- 

 ogical departments of the subject very much in the 

 background, and training the student first of all in 

 morphology and the rudiments of classification ; on the 

 ground that by this plan the evil is avoided of "directing 

 the attention of the student to a series of isolated facts 

 and abstract propositions," and of " loading the memory 

 with second-hand information, of no use whatever outside 

 the walls of the examination-room, and indeed of but 

 little service in practical examinations." We may venture 

 to question whether the plan adopted in this work is alto- 

 gether the best for securing this desirable result, whether 

 for example, the pages devoted to phyllotaxis ^ do not 

 include a number of "isolated facts and abstract proposi- 

 tions," and whether a longer or shorter description of 

 the characters of considerably over 200 natural orders of 

 flowering plants— when those of twenty-five or thirty are all 

 that would be likely to be of any use to the medical student 

 — may not fairly be open to the charge of " loading the 

 memory with second-hand information ; " since it is very 

 few, even of the most experienced botanists, whose personal 

 observation has embraced so wide a range. It is true that 

 this portion may be skipped by the beginner ; but then, why 

 include it in a work specially intended for beginners? 

 Fortunately, the day of " Complete Guides to Know- 

 ledge " has altogether gone by. The teacher no longer 

 calculates on getting the outlines of every conceivable 

 science within a single pair of boards. This tendency 

 must advance still further, and our text-books must 

 gradually divide themselves into two classes : — one giving 

 primary instruction in the outlines of the entire science ; 

 the other, for the more advanced student, entering into 

 the fullest details of special branches. In the science of 

 botany we have numerous admirable text-books and 

 primers which might be included in the first category ; in 

 the second, English literature is not yet so rich as French 

 or German. The book before us seems to occupy an 



' Evidently by an error of the press, the continued fraction of which the 

 most common angles of divergencj are successive convergents, is given 

 as 'i -I- 1 + 1, &c., instead of 1 



2 11 2 + 



a correction needful to 



i + i' 

 render the sentence intelligible to the student. 



Vol. XVIII. — No. 452 



&c., 



intermediate position between the two ; it is needlessly 

 bulky and expensive for the medical student who looks 

 to nothing but keeping himself abreast of a three-months' 

 course of lectures ; it will not suffice for one who aims at 

 becoming a scientific botanist. 



After this criticism on the plan of the work — a point 

 on which it is inevitable that different experiences and 

 different modes of looking at the subject will lead to 

 different conclusions — the manner in which the plan is 

 carried out claims all but unqualified approval. In parti- 

 cular is this edition a great advance, in both completeness 

 and accuracy, on that which preceded it ; and the editor 

 may be congratulated on having got together a larger 

 amount of trustworthy and accurate information than can 

 be found in any similar work of the same size. Here and 

 there the terminology is hardly abreast of that of the most 

 approved recent writers, as where the term "perisperm" 

 is still used as synonymous with "albumen," to signify 

 any nutritious tissue intermediate in the ripe seed between 

 the testa and the embryo ; instead of being confined to 

 the case where this tissue is developed out of that of the 

 nucleus, as in the Nymphaeaceae, Piperaceae, and Can- 

 naceas, in contrast to the much more common "endo- 

 sperm" which originates primarily within the embryo-sac. 

 But it is remarkable how very few instances there 

 are of defects of this kind, so liable to occur in new- 

 editions of old standard works. We notice with satis- 

 faction the tendency to anglicise certain terras, the 

 foreign aspect _of which is repulsive to the beginner. 

 Why should not "epiderm" and "parenchyme" be- 

 come universal, instead of "epidermis" and "paren- 

 chyma" ? 



It is difficult t® decide which part of the work 

 is in itself the most satisfactory, that on morpho- 

 log}', on classification, or on physiology, each of these 

 constituting a clear and admirable treatise. The plan 

 advocated in some text-books, of giving the authority of 

 the actual observer for every statement, is not adopted 

 here, and we think wisely. The beginner must take facts 

 which he is not able to verify for himself on the autho- 

 rity of his immediate teacher ; it is only when the be- 

 ginner becomes a student that he has any occasion to 

 trace every statement to its source, or is able to form 

 any judgment on the relative value of different autho- 

 rities. The advanced text-book of our second category 

 should, therefore, be copious in references ; the primer 

 is better without them. 



In the department relating to the classification of 

 Cryptogams, Dr. Masters has had the valuable assistance 

 of Mr. George Murray, of the British Museum ; and this 

 portion is enriched with a large amount of new and 

 excellent matter. We see, however, here some of the 

 inherent defects of a triple authorship, in the occasional 

 want of harmony of different portions. Thus, while in 

 the general introduction to classification the latest 

 arrangement, that of Sachs's " Lehrbuch," fourth edition,^ 

 is given, the system actually adopted is substantially that 

 of the second edition of Henfrey' s book ; Algae and 

 Fungi are still maintained as separate groups, and the 

 former are divided into Characeae, Rhodospermeae, 



' Sachs is, however, erroneously credited with locating Eugleneae unde 

 Protophyta. He has never, as far as we are aware, claimed for Euglcna a 

 position even in' the vegetable kingdom 



