REVIEWS. 
415 
the leading scientific men in the country refused their signatures, whilst Sir 
J. Herschel, Sir J. Bowring, and Sir W. Hamilton administered through 
the press the most crushing rebuke to those who had got up the circular. 
And finally Professor De Morgan, in a parody, u covered memorial and memo- 
rialists with ridicule.” We trust that this little book will help to allay 
some of the fears which religious people feel in regard to science, which can 
never come into conflict with genuine religion. The one is a mass of teach- 
ing all deduced from facts. The other has to do with those peculiar yearn- 
ings which all possess at some time or other, and which cannot he sup- 
pressed by any amount of teaching in minds of a certain stamp. 
ELEMENTARY BOTANY.* 
T HIS is, with one or two exceptions, an admirable little work, well illus- 
trated and cleverly written, while its woodcuts are most numerous — a 
point of immense advantage — and are generally well done. Withal, when 
we state that it is published at sixpence — which means that it is sold at 
about fourpence — our readers will be not a little astonished. The writer, 
Mr. W. Bland, is master of the Educational School at Duffield, and he has 
certainly done well in getting up such a book for his own and other pupils. 
The work is well done, save in the horrible selection of that barbarism of 
barbarisms, an artificial system of classification. Why did not Mr. Bland 
choose the excellent natural system to be found in Bentham’s “ Handbook of 
the British Flora ”? We think, too, the postscript by the Rev. J. Smith might 
have been written in plain English, or omitted altogether. We object to 
sentences for children such as “ Corrosive sublimate plus saturation,” and 
that singularly unnecessary and pedantic expression, 11 culinary heat.” 
A POPULAR FERN BOOK.f 
W E think there is an abundance of books in the market on ferns ; indeed, 
we may almost say that it is glutted. And therefore, unless a book 
is written on this subject which has peculiar views of its own which tend 
to make it distinct from those which have gone before it, we think there 
is no justification for its publication. Well, now, can we say aught of the 
work before us that will help us to place it in a category of its own ? We 
think we can. It is a book written by one who is evidently an intense 
lover of fern-life, and it is intended rather to awake a love for fern culture 
than to help the amateur botanist to study the group as a whole, or to find 
out any particular species he may have come across in his wanderings in the 
* “ Notes of Lessons on Elementary Botany.” By W. Bland. Part T., 
First Year’s Course, with 140 illustrations. London : Bemrose and Sons. 
f u The Fern Paradise. A Plea for the Culture of Ferns.” By F. G. 
Heath. Second edition. London : Hodder & Stoughton. 1876. 
