554 Beviews. [July? 



Finger. A catalogue is given of the trees and shrubs indigenous in 

 Greece and Italy, with the ancient Greek and Latin synonyms. 



Dr. Daubeny remarks on the small progress made in natural 

 knowledge between the period of Alexander and Trajan, a distance 

 of time amounting to not less than 400 to 500 years. In accuracy of 

 information, Theophrastus and Aristotle both greatly exceed Pliny, 

 whose work, although invaluable as a Cyclopaedia, bears evident marks 

 of being a compilation, and not the result of original research. 



" The Romans, indeed, seemed to have acted towards the Greeks as 

 our Mediaeval writers did towards the Ancients, and instead of ob- 

 serving for themselves, were contented with copying from preceding 

 authors, whose statements had with them the force and authority of 

 ocular demonstration. Thus there is often a remarkable similarity 

 between the descriptions of plants given by Pliny and Dioscorides, 

 showing either that one copied from the other, or that both derived 

 their information from some common source. Yet neither writer ever 

 alludes to the other. The works of Columella, too, are, in most 

 respects, an amplification in more elegant Latinity of the earlier 

 writings of Cato and Varro, and very possibly the two latter would 

 have been found to be taken from the great Carthaginian work ' On 

 Agriculture,' by Mago, if the latter had come down to us. How 

 mortifying it is to think, that whilst these repetitions of facts, and 

 even of old fables, recorded by many of the authors referred to, might 

 have been so well spared, we should have to deplore such gaps in the 

 history and literature of antiquity as have arisen from the loss of 

 many of the books of Livy, and from the almost entire destruction of 

 the Comedies of Menander and Epicharmus." 



Dr. Daubeny's work is one of much interest, and is valuable not 

 merely to the Botanist, but to the Philologist and Antiquarian. We 

 recommend it as containing information which cannot easily be pro- 

 cured elsewhere. 



SCIENTIFIC ASCENTS OF MONT BLANC. 



Charles Martins gives a notice of two scientific ascents of Mont 

 Blanc* He describes, in the first place, the ascent of Horace Bene- 

 dict de Saussure in 1787, and gives full details of the results of his 

 labours. This first grand scientific ascent has served as the model of 

 all others. During a space of fifty-seven years, from 1787 to 1843, 

 there were twenty-seven ascents of Mont Blanc ; but none of these 

 were of a truly scientific character. A noble curiosity — a desire to 

 visit the world of snow and ice, and to enjoy from the summit of 

 Mont Blanc one of the grandest views which man can contemplate ; 

 such were the motives by which the greater part of travellers were 

 actuated. Nevertheless several travellers published some interesting 



* ' Deux Ascensions Scientifiques au Mont-Blanc, leursresu] tats immediats pour 

 la Me'teorologie, la Physique du Globe et les Sciences Naturelles.' Par Charles 

 Martins, Professeur d'Histoire Naturelle a la Faculte de Medecine de Montpellier. 

 8vo. Paris, 1865. pp. 38. 



