BENTHAWS FLORA OF HONGKONG. 121 



adhesion reaches above the level of the insertion of the 

 lowest ovule ; which would make most Saxifrages epigynous. 

 Besides the etymological objections, and the inconvenience 

 of a change, the new definitions seem to us to be at least as 

 ambiguous as the old in practice ; and it is not surprising 

 that they are not uniformly adopted in the Hongkong Flora 

 itself. 



Finally, as to paragraph 166, we are not much better satisfied 

 with the definition that the radicle is the " base of the future 

 root," than with the original statement that it is " the future 

 root." To us nothing in botany is clearer, or more patent to 

 observation during germination, than that while the radicle 

 is, if you please, "the base of the future root" inasmuch as it 

 is that from which the root proceeds, it is itself the first inter- 

 node of the stem. This view, to which morphological considera- 

 tions and observation of the development long since brought 

 us, appears to be generally adopted by the French and Ger- 

 man botanists, but not by the English. If the radicle univer- 

 sally failed to elongate, as in Monocotyledons, and in the Pea, 

 Oak and others with hvpogseous germination, this organ might 

 be deemed to be merely the base of the future root ; but its 

 more usual elongation, in the manner of any other internode, 

 plainly reveals the cauline nature which analogy would also 

 assign to it. 



The chapter on Vegetable Anatomy and Physiology is new, 

 is very condensed, and considering that it deals with matters 

 to which Mr. Bentham has never specially atteuded, is remark- 

 ably good and accurate. We merely observe in passing, of 

 paragraphs 195, 197, that the distinction between exogenous 

 and endogenous stems is as obvious during the first season, 

 and even at its beginning, as ever afterward, and it is then 

 that the purely systematic botanist will more commonly have 

 occasion to examine the structure in this regard ; of § 198 5 , that 

 "the liber or inner bark " is by no means always " formed of 

 bast cells ; " of § 200, that we cannot accept the statement 

 that " in the leaf the structure of the petioles and principal 

 ribs or veins is the same as that of the young branches of 

 which they are ramifications," at least in any sense in which 



