No. 382.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 803 
it has led to the illustration of 4162 species, belonging to 1103 genera 
and 177 families, by figures drawn from nature for the work. No 
less commendable is the effort to bring together in the index all of 
the popular names employed for the wild plants of the region covered 
— a task in which the scholarship of Judge Brown has proved no 
less serviceable than the botanical acumen of Dr. Britton in the 
management of the systematic details. 
As a general thing, floras of regions that have been so long and so 
well studied as the eastern United States are compends of species 
which have been published previously in monographs of genera, 
accounts of special collections, and the like, their chief value con- 
sisting in the skillful elimination of insufficiently grounded species 
and the provision of keys of all grades, by which rapid and accurate 
diagnosis is made of those which are maintained. The ///ustrated 
Vlora claims conservatism in the admission of new species, but admits 
that “it is better to err in illustrating too many forms, rather than in 
giving too few”; and besides splitting composite species into forms 
which really conservative botanists are disposed to unite, it contains, 
especially in the third volume, a considerable number of original 
descriptions which will render its possession indispensable to future 
students of the American flora, whether they agree with its authors or 
not. Especial attention should be called to the dozen or more asters 
characterized as new species, not to mention the very large number 
of forms in the same genus which are given new varietal names, as 
a result of the preliminary revision of this difficult genus by Professor 
Burgess. 
No descriptive manual of recent times is likely to be more 
diversely judged by the botanical public than the one under review. 
Its aims are excellent. Its keys and figures usually give a Latin 
name for any individual specimen, and the non-professional user, by 
following the naive suggestion to use the index of common names in 
connection with the figures, is likely to make surprising and no doubt 
gratifying progress in the acquisition of this sort of information. But 
he is likely, if he progress to the comparison of the characters of his 
Specimens with the descriptive text, to find some puzzling interlock- 
ing of the species that have received names. He is sure, also, to 
find that the Latin names used are not those that he will find in 
common use in other botanical, horticultural, and pharmaceutical 
works that he is likely to consult, if his studies are technical, nor in 
the usual works relating to the flora of the eastern United States, if 
he be a botanist or botanically inclined. If already familiar enough 
