204 REVIEWS. 



eriy so called, which passes downwards through this cellular 

 tissue, slowly and secretly ; and then upwards, through the 

 great vessels of the tree, violently, stretching out the supple 

 twigs of it as you see a flaccid w^ater-pipe swell and move 

 when the cock is turned to fill it. And the tree becomes lit- 

 erally a fountain, of which the springing streamlets are clothed 

 with new-woven garments of green tissue, and of which the 

 silver spray stays in the sky — a spray, now, of leaves." 



Then as to the blossom : " The flow^er exists for its own 

 sake, not for the fruit's sake. . . . But the flower is the end 

 of the seed, not the seed of the flower." " The corolla leads 

 and is the object of final purpose. The stamens and the 

 treasuries [Mr. Kuskin's new term for pistils] are only there 

 in order to produce future corollas." Without criticising any- 

 body's notion of final causes, we only notice how Mr. Ruskin 

 fails to make his own point. He has seen " among the specu- 

 lations of modern science, several, lately, not uningenious, and 

 highly industrious, on the subject of the relation of color 

 in flowers to insects, to selective development," etc. And he 

 proceeds to intimate that even Mr. Darwin must be ranked 

 among " the men of semi-faculty or semi-education wdio are 

 more or less incapable of so much as seeing, much less think- 

 ing about color," etc., referring merely to the latter's specula- 

 tions upon the ocelli of the Argus Pheasant, in blissful igno- 

 rance, it would seem, that he has to deal with Mr. Darwin 

 upon this very subject of color and use in flowers, and that he 

 is not prepared even to state his own side of the question. 



EMERSON'S TREES AND SHRUBS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



Tree-lore ^ is no longer confined to the few, and books like 

 this address a large and various audience, or will do so when 

 they become better known. Mr. Emerson's original volume 



^ A Report on the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts, growing naturally 

 in the forests of Massachusetts. By George B. Emerson. 2d ed. Boston, 

 1875. (The Nation, No. 539, October 8, 1875.) 



