eth 
42 Notices of Botanical Literature. 
Arr. VII.—Notices of Botanical Literature, §c., in a letter to 
3 ie one of the Editors; by A. Gray. 
My Dear Sir :—I shall be glad to make up for past remissness, 
and redeem my promises as faras I now may, by sending you 
some off-hand notes upon botanical matters, whether bibliograph- 
ical or personal; if you will kindly receive them just as they are 
recalled to my memory, or as the books I wish to mention are 
presented to my notice. If I can thus give to the readers of your 
excellent Journal, interested in such topics, some general idea of | 
what has been doing in the botanical world for a year or two 
past, or is now in progress, my whole object will be attained. 
Writing without memoranda, or any definite order, I shall doubt 
ess omit much that should be mentioned, even of what may 
have fallen under my. personal observation. 
Having Systematic Botany principally in view, at present, 1 
naturally begin with the most important general systematic work 
ow in progress, viz., De Candolle’s Prodromus. Nothing has 
been published since the second part of the 13th volume, in the 
spring of 1849, (which was duly noticed in your Journal at the 
time,) not even the prior part of this 13th volume, reserved fot 
the remaining Corolliflore. Botanists will be glad to learn, how- 
ever, that the Solanacee, which Prof. Dunal has kept them 8? 
long waiting for, are actually printing off, or are by this time 
entirely printed. The genus Solanum is said to exceed evel 
gret, but not be surprised to learn, that it is determined to close 
the Prodromus at the end of the Erogene or Dicotyledones, of 
which only a small number of orders, some of them very difficult | 
ones, now re 
main, : 
Prof. Alph. De Candolle himself is much occupied with an ex 
tended treatise of the geographical distribution of plants he has 
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