52 
NATURE 
[MVov. 11, 1869 
BAILLON’S HISTORY OF PLANTS 
Histoire des Plantes. By H. Baillon. Vol. I. 8vo, 488 pp. 
With 503 figures by Faguet, price 21s, (Paris and 
London: Hachette and Co.) 
HIS is a fine book—a very fine book, one might say ; 
nevertheless, not wholly satisfactory. Turning over 
its pages we feel a sense of power wasted in an attempt 
to bring together too much in a digested form,—far more 
indeed than any one cares to find in one work. The book, 
if it goes on, will be a sort of Botanical Encyclopedia, 
suited rather for adepts and advanced students than for 
the general reader. No one thinks of turning to an 
Encyclopedia for the best and most exhaustive informa- 
tion upon anything, and so it will be in this case. 
M. Baillon brings together Organogeny, Structure, and 
Taxonomy, including a description of every genus of 
Flowering Plants. Now this is too much for any single 
mind to work out. M. Baillon is a man still young and 
vigorous, and of wonderful assiduity ; and if he live, it is 
quite possible he may bring his work to a close. And it 
will be no mean monument, though not without its 
warning, especially to those whose ambition impels them 
to aim too much at leaving behind a name in large 
characters rather than deeply cut. As yet, however, our 
author is hardly out of shallow water. 
groups which he has touched upon have been quite lately 
worked up systematically by other eminent botanists, and 
their material has doubtless afforded him a good bottom. 
This first volume consists of a series of Monographs of | 
the following Natural Orders: Ranunculacee, Dilleniacee, 
Magnoliacee, Anonacee, Monimiaceee (including Caly- 
canthez), and Rosacee. We do not find any genc:al 
clavis or table of sequence of the Orders, but, from the 
order followed so far, it would seem as though the cha- 
racters of the primary divisions of Dicotyledons, usually 
accepted as most convenient by systematists, depending 
on the absence or presence of adhesion between the inner 
and outer whorls of the flower, were regarded as subor- 
dinate to characters based simply on cohesion or its 
absence between the carpels forming the pistil. All the 
Orders enumerated, and those in the first part of Vol. II. 
already published, are essentially apocarpous. Four of 
CurysopaLanus Icaco (Section of Flower) 
them have perfect flowers and hypogynous insertion of 
the floral whorls ; one (Monimiacez) is mainly imperfect 
and monochlamydeous ; and Rosacez are perfect and 
perigynous. Now anew system is very apt to be a great 
Nearly all the | 
bore. Nobody knows what is coming next, nor where to 
look for a thing ; and in the present state of knowledge, in 
such secondary matters as the mere sequence of Orders, 
it is better to sacrifice the expression of a supposed 
affinity by a new juxtaposition in linear series, for the sake 
of a uniformity with accepted plans of arrangement, 
which have been tested many years, are widely used in the 
CHR\SOBALANUS IcAco 
best books, and which adventurers are too glad to fall back 
upon when they have sense to know when they get out 
of their depth. 
However, waiving allthis, letusdo M. Baillon the justiceto 
say that he here puts on record many original observations 
of great value: he is very clear, and, like many of his 
countrymen, has a neat way of putting things: his 
pictorial illustrations (in woodcut) are admirable and well- 
selected, as the accompanying examples will show; and, 
as we have said above, he is making a very fine book. 
By way of sample of the work, let us take a small 
Natural Order: Magnoliaceze, the Family of the Mag- 
nolias and Tulip-trees. First of all we have the Order 
divided into what M. Baillon calls Sevzes, which, in the 
main, answer to the Tribes or Sub-orders of other 
writers. Camel/ee we notice is one of these: a group 
maintained of ordinal value, by Messrs. Bentham and 
Hooker, near to Bixinez, on the ground of their syncarpous 
ovary and parictal placentation,—characters which M. 
Baillon estimates as analogous, in respect of their de- 
parture from the Magnolioid type to the similar conditions 
of Afonodora in relation to other Anonacee. A good 
description, with capital figures, is given of what the 
author treats as type-species of the genuine Magnolias, 
