118 LincUei/s Scrtum Orchidaccum. 



and strengiiens the plant." [Paxt. Mag. of Bot., vol. v. p. 6.) 

 We are happy to see some improvement in the colouring of the 

 plates of Paxton's Magazine, but it is still not what it ought to 

 be in this respect. 



REVIEWS. 



Art. I. Sertum Orchidaceum ; a Wreath of the most beautiful Or- 

 chidaceous Flo-.vers. Selected by John Lindley, Ph. D., F.R.S., 

 Professor of Botany in University College, London, and in the 

 Royal Institution of Great Britain, &c. Part I. Folio, 5 plates. 

 London. Price 1/. 5s. 



" In consequence of the growing taste for the cultivation of 

 tropical orchideous plants, and the impossibility of doing justice 

 to many of those noble epiphytes in the small plates of the cheap 

 botanical periodicals of the day, Messrs. Ridgvvay have been 

 induced to make arrangements with Professor Lindley for the 

 publication of a selection of the most remarkable of the tribe, in 

 a manner worthy of their interest and beauty." (Advert.) The 

 figures will be partly of species which may flower from time to 

 time in the hot-houses of this country, and partly of some of those 

 magnificent plants of this order, which are at present unknown 

 in Europe in a living state. " It is expected that by this means 

 cultivators will have the advantage of knowing in what countries 

 to seek for such kinds as it is most desirable to procure, and will 

 also know when the specimens they already possess have arrived 

 at the greatest perfection of which they are susceptible." (Ibid.) 

 This work, therefore, though it may be considered as ranking 

 with the Orchidacea; of Mr. Bateman, is evidently not intended to 

 be so much a work of luxury as that work ; and, therefore, in 

 estimating its comparative merits, it may be looked on as a collec- 

 tion of botanical figures, but on a larger scale, and more highly 

 finished, than is generally the case in such works. The Ser- 

 tum " will be completed in twenty folio numbers, each containing 

 five plates, highly finished from drawings expressly made for the 

 purpose by Miss Drake. They will appear every three months, 

 price 25s. each ; and ten numbers will form a volume." 



The figures in the part before us are beautifully coloured, par- 

 ticularly Dendrobium nubile; though in some of them there is 

 a coarseness of outline and of shading, which we hardly expected 

 from the lithography of M. Gauci. In our opinion, the finish of 

 most of the plates in the Floral Cabinet is superior, in point of 

 delicacy, either to those of the Serttim Orchidaceum, or the Orchi- 

 dacecjc of Mexico and Gvatemala. Dr. Lindley's figures are, 

 however, to be considered only as botanical portraits, not as 

 works of art. We are <|uite aware that botanists very properly 



