Revieic of Elements of Botany. 421 



REVIEWS. 



Art. I. Elements of Botany. By Asa Gray, M. D., Mem- 

 ber of the Cosar. Acad. Naturae Curiosum, and of the Lyceum 

 of Natural History, New York. 1 Vol. 12mo. pp. 428. 

 Carvill & Co., New York. 1836. 



If there are persons, and we doubt not there are many, who 

 have felt a desire to become acquainted with that almost infinite 

 variety of living organized substances, which, under the name of 

 vegetation, in thousands of beautiful forms, and innumerable va- 

 riations of structure, from the humblest moss to the loftiest forest 

 tree, administer to the delights, the comforts, and the necessities 

 ■of man — if any, we say, have felt such a desire, and have been 

 deterred from so doing by opening a volume of one of the old 

 authors on botany, filled with hard terms, dull explanations of 

 classes and orders, and dry technical details, we commend 

 them to the work whose title stands at the head of this arti- 

 cle. Botany, a science which at the present day comprises 

 some knowledge of more than two hundred thousand distinct 

 individuals, is not, as some seem to suppose, simply an amuse- 

 ment for the idle, or a pastime for the curious; nor does the fact 

 of being able to dignify a pretty blossom with a learned name 

 constitute the sum total of botanical knowledge. It is, however, 

 that branch of natural history, which, examining minutely that 

 wonderful combination of vegetable forms which occupy so large 

 -a portion of the earth's surface, teaches us the manner of their 

 construction, their distinctive characteristics, the relations they 

 bear to each other, the uses to which mankind ahke in a savage 

 or civilized condition appropriate them, and the great and im- 

 portant services they perform in the economy of nature. It is 

 that science, in the possession of which the lover of nature will 

 find a volume perpetually new, and ever varied and instructive, 

 open before him. If he ramble forth to the woods and hills, his 

 walks will never be companionless — and there is no mountain so 

 barren that it does not produce a few lichens — no sea so bound- 

 less but in its waters are found the ever flourishing algcB — nor any 

 clime so bleak that the eye may not rest upon a few mosses, mi- 

 nute, yet not unimportant links in the great chain of creation. If 

 in a strange land, it will instruct him how to distinguish wholesome 

 vegetables from noxious weeds — nutritious fruits from poisons, 

 and, at home, through it he may discover qualities and properties 



