388 Bibliography. 



believe that the compensation allowed the author was too small to per- 

 mit him to incur this expense. This should not have been so. The 

 commonwealth of Massachusetts, deservedly renowned both here and 

 in foreign countries, for her patronage of science, may justly feel an 

 honest pride in counting among her sons, a man adequate to such a 

 task, and she should have granted him the most ample means of illus- 

 trating this important work. C. 



10. The Botanical Text Book, for Colleges, Schools, and private 

 Students ; comprising. Part I. An Introduction to Structural and Physi- 

 ological Botany ; Part II. The Principles of Systematic Botany, with 

 an account of the chief Natural Families of the Vegetable Kingdom, 

 and notices of the principal officinal or otherwise useful Plants. Illus- 

 trated with numerous Engravings on wood. By Asa Gkay, M. D., 

 Fisher Professor of Natural History in Harvard University, &c. 



The Text Book of Dr. Gray, affords at once the most compendious 

 and satisfactory view of the vegetable kingdom which has yet been 

 offered, in an elementary treatise, to the American public. In a style 

 remarkable for its correctness and perspicuity, the author has traced 

 and unfolded the vegetable structure, from its simplest forms up to its 

 most complicated and elaborate developments. He has presented us 

 with the first principles of the science, in accordance with the beauti- 

 ful and truly philosophical doctrines of Wolfe and Goethe — explaining 

 the laws, and illustrating the processes by which the external organs of 

 plants are gradually modified, or metamorphosed, from the crude coty- 

 ledons of the germinating seed, to the most delicate component parts 

 of the flower and the fruit. We are thus enabled to comprehend, in 

 the most satisfactory manner, all those curious combinations and sup- 

 pressions of organs, those fantastic deviations from symmetry, or nor- 

 mal arrangements of parts, which have hitherto been considered so 

 mysterious, and have so long baffled the sagacity of naturalists. The 

 admirable doctrine of vegetable metamorphosis has, indeed, given to 

 the science of botany an entirely new aspect. As our author in his 

 felicitous manner observes, " the application of this theory, like the 

 touch of the spear of Ithuriel, causes the most anomalous structures and 

 disguised forms of vegetable organization, to reveal their typical state 

 and primitive character." 



With this Text Book in their hands, the teachers of botany in our 

 seminaries may speedily elevate the study to its legitimate rank among 

 the natural sciences. Fascinating as it has ever been to gentle minds, 

 by reason of the beauties of its objects, it may now be invested with 

 an interest hitherto unknown to its votaries. While the student will be 

 attracted by those charms so obvious to the senses, his faculties of ob- 



