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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW'. 
POPULAR NAMES OF BRITISH PLANTS.* 
T HE popular names of our native plants are, we fear, too much 
neglected by teachers of taxological botany. We are, therefore, 
glad to find that an attempt has been made to prevent their extinction, 
and accordingly we welcome Dr. Prior to the field he has selected. Un- 
doubtedly, the task of explaining the signification of the common names of 
plants is an exceedingly difficult one ; hence, if we find some of our 
author’s explanations a little conjectural and unsatisfactory, the writer 
can hardly be reproached severely for what was evidently due rather to 
the lack of existing information than to his endeavours to compile from 
all available sources. The plan of the book is to be approved of, but the 
matter is of so dry and encyclopaedic a character, that we fancy it will not 
be so generally read as the more interesting descriptions which the talented 
editor of “ Sowerby’s English Botany ” has already given to the public. 
For all that, it is a most valuable compilation. A quotation will expose 
its merits better than any remarks of ours. Let us select the Fumitory for 
example : — 
“ Fumitory, French fume-terre, Latin fumus terrm, earth-smoke, from 
the belief that it was produced without seed from vapours rising from the 
earth. See Ortus Sanitatus, Mayence, 1485, ch. 176, and the Grete Herball, 
cap. clxxi., where we are told that it is 4 called Fume, or smoke of the 
earth, because it is engendred of a cours fumositie rysing from the earthe, 
and because it cometh out of the earth in great quantity lyke smoke ; thys 
grosse or cours fumositie of the earthe, wyndeth and wyndeth out, and by 
working of the ayre and sunne it tourneth into this herbe, &c.’ ” 
There are other names, however, whose origin is not so well explained. 
We do not think that Bedstraw is so called from having been formerly 
employed for bedding ; nor do we believe that the term Alder is derived 
from an awl, because it may have formed the handle of the latter instru- 
ment. Viewed in its tout ensemble , Dr. Prior’s book is a useful and impor- 
tant production, and in the hands of the field-botanist will constitute a 
capital adjunct to the British Flora. 
THE BIRDS OF EUROPE.f 
T HOSE who possess the preceding volumes of this splendid work will 
hail the appearance of the fourth and concluding portion with 
feelings of intense satisfaction. It comprises the natural history of nearly 
fifty birds which, though recorded as having been found in Europe, are not 
British. The technical characters, both generic and specific, are intelligible 
to the zoologist, and the general features are given in so popular a style, 
* “ On the Popular Names of British Plants,” &c. By R. C. A. Prior, 
M.D., F.L.S. London : Williams & Norgate. 1863. 
t “ A History of the Birds of Europe not observed in the British Isles.” 
By C. R. Bree, M.D., F.L.S. Vol. IV. London: Groombridge & Sons, 
1863. 
