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Botany and Zoology, 435 



It seems strange at first to iutei'pose Systematic Botany between the 

 morphological and the physiological; but if the anatomy and physiology 

 of plants are to be completely disjoined from the study of the organs of 

 the plant as a wliole, the present arrangement is perhaps as good as any. 

 It is adopted, as the preface shows, for the convenience of instructing med- 

 ical students, •\\'ho compose the principal part of classes in Great Britain 

 as well as on the Continent; — for whom "one short course of lectures id 

 devoted to this science, and three months is commonly all the time 

 allotted to the teacher for laying the foundations and building the super- 

 structure of a knowledge of botany in the minds of Ins pupils, very few 

 of whom come prepared even with the most rudimentary acquaintance 

 with the science" But the author remarks that "if the previous educa- 

 tion of medical students prepared them, as it should, with an elementary 

 knowledge of the natural sciences, we should make physiology the most 

 conspicuous feature of a course of botany in a medical school." 



While in England botany is scarcely an academical study, here it per- 

 tains to collcpfiate and academical instruction where it is tauo:ht at all. 

 In Europe not even an apothecary can be licensed without passing an ex- 

 amination 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 tho 

 vegetable kingdom, which supplies the greater part of the materia medica^ 

 is required for the degree of Doctor in Medicine I 



Professor Henfrey is chiefly known, and most highly esteemed, aa a 

 vegetable anatomist. Upon this subject he may speak with an authority 

 which, as a systematist, or even as a morphologist, he would 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, we should not take this trouble. 



j As respects the first point noticed, our author, if wrong, 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 michallenged his reiterated state- 

 ment that in Monocotyledons, the radicle, or its inferior extremity, is never 

 developed 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. 11ns, indeed, does not continue as a tap-root; 

 iieither does it in a great many Dicotyledons. In squashes, pumpkins, 

 &c., there is no one priniary root, but a cluster of rootlets from the fij-st, 

 all springing from the base of the stout radicle. In fact, this distinction 

 between 'Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons is null. A character of cer- 



' tain monocotyledonous embryos, neither strictly peculiar to the cla??, nor 



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

 ^0 the morphology of the radicle itself, we suppose that the germination 

 of any of the larger Cucurbitacese, or of a bean, would suffice to convince 

 any observer that the radicle is simply the first internode of the stem, 

 giving birth to the primary root from its inferior extremity, usually,— and 

 indeed, from the exceptional cases where it does not we should draw addi- 



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