Keith's Botanical Lexicon. g9 



wet are only preparing them for the rubbish-heap. Some will 

 say they do well enough under a wall. Yes, they will, because 

 their treatment there is regular : but, by the above plan, we save 

 ground and gain time ; and, by the lights being always on, we 

 save our plants from the injury they would receive from treadino- 

 upon the soil about them night and morning. 

 Dyrliam Park Gardens^ Dec. 8. 1837. 



REVIEWS. 



Art. I. A Botanical Lexicon, or Expositor of the Terms, Facts, and 

 Doctrines of the Vegetable Physiology, brought down to the present 

 Time. By the Rev. Patrick Keith, Clerk, F.L.S., Rector of 

 Buckinge, Kent, and Author of " A System of Physiological 

 Botany." London, Orr and Co., 1837. 



This is a very useful work, and should be in the hands of 

 every young botanist and every young gardener. It contains, 

 not only the marrow of the reverend gentleman's former work 

 on the same subject, but numerous quotations from every au- 

 thor, ancient and modern; forming a valuable compendium of 

 botanical knowledge. 



The author's intimate acquaintance with the languages of 

 Greece and Rome renders him eminently qualified for drawing 

 thence every observation on vegetable phenomena which appears 

 in the earlier writers, and which may serve to throw light on the 

 history of systematic or local botany. This is so far valuable, in 

 enabling us to compare the knowledge of the ancients with what 

 is now known and taught; and it also shows by what gradual 

 steps the science of botany has been advanced to its present pre- 

 eminence. Neither are such quotations given, as we have often 

 met with them before, " stark naked," but accompanied with 

 sound critical remarks, which greatly enhances their value. 



Another very useful feature in this book is, the chemical 

 knowledge of the author, which is always brought to bear on 

 and explain vegetable phenomena, not otherwise to be accounted 

 for, and thus illustrating what is naturally obscure. 



The author strongly recommends the study of comparative 

 anatomy to the student of vegetable physiology, he being of 

 opinion that they throw light on each other ; and, to assist the 

 student in this, has very properly added an article " Zoology" 

 at the end of the Lexicoii. In this particular, our author has 

 gone, perhaps, farther than he will get many naturalists to fol- 

 low him ; though he keeps himself quite free from the extrava- 

 gance of those naturalists who vainly endeavoured to explain all 

 the parts and powers of vegetables by comparing them with the 

 parts and functions of animals. 



