104 REVIEWS. 



Mississippi, the Amazon, and by every great continental river ; 

 and bow active, beyond all ordinary conception, must the 

 process of nitrification be all over the land ; and how vast the 

 su^Dply of assimilable nitrogen for the use of vegetation ! 



BENTHAM'S HAND-BOOK OF THE BRITISH FLORA. 



One of the best systematic botanists — of the soundest 

 judgment and the largest experience, both in European and 

 exotic botany — has deemed it no unfit employment of a por- 

 tion of his valuable time to prepare a volume ^ by which 

 beginners, having no previous acquaintance with the science, 

 may learn to know most advantageously and readily, the wild 

 flowers and plants of his native land. The result is a genuine 

 popular Flora, and a clear proof that the plants of a limited 

 country may be described, by one who understands them thor- 

 oughly, in comparatively simple language, without any sacri- 

 fice of scientific accuracy, or of scientific interest. No really 

 good work of this kind was ever made by a compiler ; and no 

 one who has not essayed the task, can comprehend how thor- 

 oughly faithful writing for beginners brings one's knowledge 

 to the proof. 



The characteristic features of the work before us are : 1. 

 The full use of analytical keys, after the mode of Da Can- 

 doUe's " Flora Fran^aise," leading easily not only to the order 

 and the genus, but also to the species of the plant in hand. 

 These keys, or analyses, are here made to supersede specific 

 characters as such, neat and free in descriptions, longer or 

 shorter according to circumstances, occupying their place. 

 But generic characters are given with considerable fullness. 

 2. The exclusion of all technical terms which were not re- 

 quired for the purpose in view, and " the omission, in nu- 

 merous instances, of microscopical, anatomical, or theoretical 



1 Hand-hook of the British Flora ; a Description of the Flowering Plants 

 and Ferns indigenous to, or naturalized in, the British Isles : for the use of 

 Beginners and A mateurs. By George Bentham. London, 1858. (Amer- 

 ican Journal of Science and Arts, 2 ser., xxvi. 413.) 



