454) Main^s Illustratio7is of VegetaUe Physiology. 



Mawe's " Every Man his own Gardener," " The Green- 

 house Companion," &c.) : Ilkistrations of Vegetable Physi- 

 ology, practically applied to the Garden, the Field, and 

 the Forest ; consisting of Original Observations collected 

 during an experience of fifty years. Small Svo, 328 pages, 

 with 62 woodcuts. London, 1833. 85. 

 A look through this work has given us much pleasure. 

 The author, in his preface, states that it has been his inten- 

 tion to render the work "a compendium of the discoveries 

 and best authenticated facts which have appeared in the 

 writings of others, and which have been proved in the practice 

 and experience of the writer, or in that of his contemporaries, 

 during the last fifty years." 



" He trusts that new matter enough will be found to justify 

 the publication ; and though but a rough sketch, which, from 

 his very limited knowledge of chemistry, he has not been able 

 to fill up as he wished, still he entertains a hope that, such 

 as it is, it may receive amplification from an abler pen, and 

 accomplish his aim of rendering vegetable physiology better 

 and more generally understood." The work has, in conse- 

 quence, been so written as "to bear a. popular rather than a 

 scientific character, with the sole view of assisting, by fami- 

 liar explanation, the various practice of the gardener and 

 woodman. In fact, the principal feature of the work is an 

 attempt to explain only what has been obscurely, or too learn- 

 edly^ treated before ; to mention circumstances which, though 

 generally known, have never appeared in print ; and to 

 make up for deficient language by explanatory figures of the 

 visible constituents of plants : the intention being, however, 

 only to mark the greater parts, their limits, and their con- 

 nections, leaving the minor and less striking portions of vege- 

 table structure to those who may have better opportunities to 

 examine and describe them." 



The work, then, is designed to be a useful manual to 

 every one who gardens, or spends more or less of his time 

 among plants, and addicts himself to the consideration and in- 

 vestigation of the phenomena they display, and of the hidden 

 processes carried on within them. To all such persons the 

 work will be useful ; and as, happily (happily for their own 

 happiness), persons of this class are now numerous in Britain, 

 the work will doubtless become, as it is intended to be, a 

 popular one; and in this view of the case we can only 

 express our surprise that the publisher should have been 

 tempted to fix the price of the volume so injudiciously high. 

 How can we possibly recommend this small volume, of little 

 more than 300 pages, to a journeyman gardener, when as 



