74 REVIEWS, 



here it pertains to collegiate and academical instruction where 

 it is taught at all. In Europe not even an apothecary can be 

 licensed without passing an examination in botany ; in the 

 whole United States, we believe, it forms no part, at least no 

 regular part, of the medical curriculum ; no medical school has 

 a botanical chair ; and no knowledge whatever of the science 

 of the vegetable kingdom, which supplies the greater part of 

 the jnateria medica^ is required for the degree of Doctor in 

 Medicine ! 



Professor Henfrey is chiefly known, and most highly es- 

 teemed, as a vegetable anatomist. Upon this subject he may 

 speak with an authority which as a systematist, or even as a 

 morphologist, he w^ould not pretend to. We shall offer no 

 apology, therefore, for making an occasional criticism, and 

 for pointing out several errors in matters of detail. These 

 are not intended to disparage the work, for if we had not 

 formed a high opinion of it on the whole, w^e should not take 

 this trouble. 



As respects the first point noticed, our author, if wTong, is 

 not alone. Still, we hardly expected him to teach that the 

 radicle of the embryo is the true root ; and we cannot let 

 pass unchallenged his reiterated statement that in Monocoty- 

 ledons, the radicle, or its inferior extremit}^, is never devel- 

 oped into a root in germination, but is abortive (pp. 14, 16, 

 18, 391, 537). Any one who will examine the germination 

 of the seed of an Iris, an Onion, or even of a grain of Indian 

 Corn, cannot fail to perceive that a primary root is developed, 

 and that this is a direct prolongation of the extremity of the 

 radicle. This, indeed, does not continue as a tap-root; 

 neither does it in a great many Dicotyledons. In Squashes, 

 Pumpkins, etc., there is no one primary root, but a cluster of 

 rootlets from the first, all springing from the base of the stout 

 radicle. In fact, this distinction between Monocotyledons 

 and Dicotyledons is null. A character of certain monocot}^- 

 ledonous embryos, neither strictly peculiar to the class, nor by 

 any means universal in it, should not be assumed as distinctive. 

 As to the morphology of the radicle itself, we suppose that the 

 germination of any of the larger Cucurhitacece, or of a bean. 



