686 Recent Literature. [ October, 
Gray’s FLORA oF NORTH America.\—All botanists will accept 
with sincere thankfulness this beginning of the new “ Flora.” A 
beginning at the middle, indeed, yet not a “beginning of the 
end;’ but so that the work be done the order of its doing may 
well be left to his choice who is looked upon with one accord as 
the only one competent for its proper performance. If a prefer- 
ence might be expressed in regard to it, it would doubtless be 
that Dr. Gray would see fit to give next a revision of what is by 
far the most intricate and difficult of all the orders of our flora, 
viz: the Composite. No portion of the proposed volumes is more 
needed by botanists or will be more acceptable, and in none is 
Dr. Gray more truly the sole authority. As he has recently gone 
over a considerable portion of the ground in his work for .the 
“ Botany of California,” this would be all the easier for him. 
In looking over the present issue, some peculiarities of arrange- 
ment at once attract attention. There are no artificial keys either 
to genera or species. Under each order the ordinal character is 
followed by a synopsis of the genera, with concise but essentially 
complete characters, grouped together not only by sub-orders or 
tribes (where such exist), but also by minor subdivisions, and 
under characteristic headings, thus avoiding repetition, and lead- 
ing most directly to the genus sought. When the genus itself is 
characters in common. The specific descriptions themselves are 
full, but without redundancy or needless repetition. Of their 
technical accuracy and finish it is unnecessary to speak. It may 
perhaps be questioned whether it would not have been well, at 
least in the larger genera, to have subjected the species to the 
same process as the genera themselves. One would imagine that 
what is best in the one case should be best in the other also. 
_ Experience in the use of the book should determine. As com- 
pared with the “ Manual” the descriptions are much fuller, and 
yet, even with the additional synonyms, etc., the species occupy 
_ on the average but little more space. A synoptical key to the orders 
~ has been omitted, doubtless because it will come more properly 
in the’ first volume at the beginning of the Gamopetale, of which 
_ we have here only the concluding portion. 
1 Synoptical Flora ar Nori America. By Asa Gray, LL.D., F.M.R.S. and L.S. 
Oy: -t i 
= Hill. Leipsic, T. O. Weigel. May, 1878. 
‘ 
. New York, Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co, London, Triibner & Co., ae 
