1858.] REVIEWS. GGl 



Professor Agardh's new Work on the Classification of Plants. 



We have very great pleasure in announcing the arrival of the 

 above-named work. Our readers will excuse an extended notice 

 of its contents, which they will see in the ' Phytologist ' for next 

 month and next year. When they are informed that what the 

 author calls the methodology (methodologia) of the system fills 

 nearly 100 pages, closely printed, imperial octavo, and that the 

 natural series of the Phanerogamous plants occupy upwards of 

 400 pages more, and that the Latin is not so easy as the language 

 of Cicero, Horace, Virgil, and Csesar, they will admit that it is 

 no schoolboy^ s task to master the principles and details of an 

 entirely new system, conveyed in a style which may be both pure 

 and perspicuous, but is by no means so easy as that of Linnseus. 

 We hope Professor Agardh will excuse this, as we hope our 

 readers will excuse us for not at present entering more deeply 

 into the subject. 



The work appears to have been prepared with the greatest care. 

 Both the letterpress and the diagrams are most elaborate. It 

 is no mere hotchpotch, patchwork treatise, composed of bits 

 from Linnseus, Jussieu, De Candolle, linger, Endlicher, Lindley, 

 etc., well shaken together and mixed secundum artem. It is a 

 genuine work. The thought and labour bestowed on it must 

 have been immense. It is a memorable example of deep research 

 and patient investigation.- 



It would be a vain speculation to anticipate what reception it 

 will receive from British botanists. Probably few would like the 

 trouble of learning a new system. When Linnaeus brought his 

 method into England, both himself and his scheme of classifica- 

 tion got a reception which was far from friendly. The great 

 botanists of that period presented him with the " cold shoulder.^^ 

 Linnssus was a young man then, comparatively unknown; 

 Agardh is surely not a young man, and he has been celebrated 

 for a quarter of a century as the most eminent living Algologist. 

 We hope his new work, the ' Theory of Classification,^ will be as 

 famous and more permanent than Linnseus's was. He can 

 hardly receive a more generous Avish or more liberal praise. The 

 'Phytologist' never had a more important communication to 

 offer to the botanical public. 



We have room only to tell our friends that the present divi- 



