422 Review of Elements of Botany. 



in more familiar species, that will be of the greatest benefit to his 

 fellow creatures. 



The change which has been effected in this science of late 

 years, by the introduction of the JS^atural system of arrangement 

 into botany and botanical woiks, is not unknown to our readers. 

 Before this, botany was charged, and perhaps justly, with being 

 too much a science of names, and its teachers with neglecting in- 

 vestigations into the nature and qualities of plants themselves, for 

 an eager pursuit of new species, or a vain desire of effecting some 

 trifling alteration in classification. The labors, however, of such 

 men as De Candolle, Jussien, Mirbel, Brown, Du Petit Thouars, 

 Lindley, and others, have now left no grounds for such an imputa- 

 tion, and have raised it to a high rank as a philosophical science. 

 Their inquiries into the structure and physiology of plants, their 

 clear discrimination of the natural afiinities and relations of the 

 various groups and families, as they are stamped upon each indi- 

 vidual and tribe by the laws of organization, and especially the 

 singular and new facts developed by vegetable morphology, 

 "which is, in the vegetable, what comparative anatomy is in the ani- 

 mal kingdom," have thrown a broad flood of light upon the sub- 

 ject, and opened a wide field for the display of talent. Minute 

 and labored researches and investigations have been made, by the 

 most distinguished botanists, into the structure of the different or- 

 gans of plants — the motion of their fluids — the different phenom- 

 ena of growth, and the metamorphoses effected by various laws 

 and causes, in the highest degree interesting, as well to the skilful 

 cultivator as to the purely scientific botanist. 



In the work before us, the aim of the author seems to have 

 been to exhibit a full view of the present state of the science, 

 with all the recent improvements and discoveries, condensed into 

 a clear and perspicuous treatise, which, being sufficiently popular 

 in expression, should at the same time retain that rigid accuracy 

 so indispensably necessary to so extensive a branch of natural 

 science. In this Dr. Gray has succeeded perfectly, and, after a 

 careful perusal, we cannot but express our admiration of the ex- 

 cellent arrangement of the subject, and the lucid manner in which 

 the whole is illustrated and explained. Those persons who are 

 not famihar with the large and expensive treatises published 

 abroad, will find a great mass of new facts for study and diges- 

 tion, and to those who are endeavoring to attain the elements of 

 botany, we recommend this volume as a text book of the highest 

 merit. 



The author has divided his subject into seven heads, viz: The 

 elementary organs of plants : Organs of vegetation : Nutrition: Or- 

 gans of reproduction: Flowerless plants: Classification of plants: 

 Glossology: with an appendix, containing ample directions for 

 preparing herbaria, and a catalogue of the natural orders. We 



