Botany. 125 
with a statement of the nature and design of a Flora, and of what a 
botanical description ought to be. 
“ These descriptions should be clear, concise, accurate and characteris- 
tic, so as that each one should be readily adapted to the plant it relates 
to, and to no other; they should be as nearly as possible arranged under 
or technically limited terms as are made use of in these Floras. 
“At the same time mathematical accuracy must not be ex ected. The 
forms and appearances assumed by plants and their parts are infinite. 
Names cannot be invented for all; those even that have been proposed 
are too numerous for ordinary memories. Many are derived from sup- 
happens that the same writer is led on different occasions to give some- 
what different meanings to the same word. The botanist’s endeavors 
ys be, on the one hand to make as near an approach to 
Successful. The aptness of a botanical description, like the beauty of a 
pies of imagination, will always vary with the style and genius of the 
aut or,” ' 
These Outlines are throughout so well sketched, and so worthy to be 
Tegarded as of standard authority, that we must still venture a criticism 
“ 
anthemum and an Aloé, falls within the a yore m8 morphology, surely 
So also must the comparison of an ordinary leaf wi 
bulb-scale, a "sei agat and no less with a sepal, a pe &e. 
Tn the latter we merely trace morphological relations © ery same 
