﻿to priut the Composite for my ' Flora of North America ' ; and am 

 reissuing for the last time some of the more difficult and more 

 unsatisfactory portions. My wife now excuses me to her friends for 

 outbreaks of ill-humor, the excuse being that I am at present in the 

 valley of the shadow of the Asters. This is 'sic itur ad astra,' 

 with a vengeance." Earlier in life— in 1847— Gray had wrestled 

 with Potamogetons : "I have been addling my brain and straining 

 my eyes over a set of ignoble Pondweeds (alias Potamogeton) trying 

 to find the 



difference there should be 

 'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee, 



for all of which I suppose nobody will thank me, and I shall get no 

 fee. Indeed, few would see the least sense in devoting so much 

 time to a set of vile little weeds. But I could not slight them. The 

 Creator seems to have bestowed as much pains on them, if we may 

 use such a word, as upon more conspicuous things, so I do not see 

 why I should not try to study them out." 



Gray's last letter has already been printed in full in these 

 pages,* with some remarks which appeared to be called for by its 

 suppression — an apparently discreditable action which seems in- 

 capable of satisfactory explanation. It is little to the credit of 

 certain American botanists that they should take every opportunity 

 of depreciating the work of their great predecessor, and the tone of 

 their comments upon him differs unpleasantly from that in which 

 he referred to his fellow- workers. 



We could linger much longer over this interesting book, but 

 space forbids. A word, however, va 

 the admirable manner in which Mi 

 Brief biographical footnotes are added throughout, and there is an 

 excellent index— a feature too often omitted from works of this kind. 



The Flora of the Assyrian Monuments and its Outcomes. By E. 

 Bonavia, M.D. Archibald Constable & Co. Westminster. 1894. 

 This book, consisting of 236 large octavo pages, is well printed 

 on good paper, but it would have certainly gained in value had the 

 writer been less diffuse, and condensed what he had to say into half, 

 or even into a quarter, the space. The first thirty-eight pages deal 

 with the flora of the Assyrian Monuments proper — a very scanty 

 one, consisting of only eleven species, including such obvious ones as 

 the date-palm, pine, pomegranate, fig, reed, and lily. Dissertations 

 on the sacred trees of Assyria and the so-called cone-fruit, follow, 

 and a somewhat lengthy essay on the Lotus (pp. 93-158), containing 

 nothing new. The author, of course, is right in identifying the lotus 

 of the Egyptian paintings with a Nymphaa, though when he says 

 that " the rose lotus (Nelumbium speciosum Willd.) never grew in the 

 Nile valley" (p. 97), he is certainly wrong. Not only do we have 

 the testimony of classical authors on this point, but the plant itself 

 is figured on several paintings of the Ptolemaic period, and seeda 



