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NEW BOOKS, WITH SHOUT NOTICES. 
Pollen. By M. Packenham Edgeworth, F.L.S., F.A.S. Illus- 
trated with 446 Figures. 8vo. London : Hardwicke and Bogue. 1877. 
— In this age of compilations, manuals, rudiments, students’ text- 
books, and the rabble of such things, it is quite refreshing to meet 
with a volume of original observations on a special botanical subject, 
and, while admiring the zeal and talents of the author, to note the 
liberal enterprise of his publishers. The present book is indeed 
highly creditable to Mr. Edgeworth and Messrs. Hardwicke and 
Bogue, and is very welcome in the present sorry state of microscopic 
pliytotomy in England. We have of late years had a surfeit of 
microscopical researches in the fossil flora, so that these seem to have 
diverted our attention from the intimate structure of the living plants 
which everywhere surround us, and to have blinded systematic 
botanists to the value of microscopic diagnostics. Should any person 
doubt this, let him give a glance at the descriptions in the current 
floras of this country and of the world. In them microscopic structure 
is generally discarded, though it would often afford valuable cha- 
racters, and precise knowledge in the place of verbal vagueness. Were 
this instrument used, even superficially, in drawing up descriptions 
of plants, we should no longer be offended by such jargon as “ plant 
mealy,” “ leaves rough with callous points,” and many other equally 
obscure expressions ; for the microscope shows that the “ mealiness ” 
of Chenopods is due to the effect on the light of peculiar utricular 
hairs, and that the “ asperities ” on the leaves of the Red Bryony 
are simply studs of calcareous granules. Indeed, a long and useful 
essay might be written on the employment by systematists of this 
kind of slipslop, which they might displace by accuracy with the aid 
of the microscope. In short, no full and true description of any 
plant can be drawn up without microscopic examination. In the 
species, genera, and orders, the characters should be given of the 
epidermis and its appendages, and of other cells or modifications 
of cells, including their contents, such as oil, resin, or crystals ; nor 
should the properties of the peculiar and often very characteristic 
juices of many plants be neglected. This might be done briefly and 
effectually, especially if confined chiefly to diagnostics, and would be 
an instructive novelty in descriptive botany. 
For all these reasons we cordially hail the advent of Mr. Edge- 
worth’s book, which is likely to become valuable for reference to 
adepts, and still more extensively interesting to amateurs. Pollen is 
at once so beautiful and significant, that it cannot fail to maintain its 
popularity among microscopic curiosities. And in either way Mr. 
Edgeworth is an admirable guide, a careful and judicious observer, 
who has carried out a series of elaborate researches without the hope 
of any other reward than the gratification of a worthy love of the 
subject. To give an abstract of his extensive observations is beyond 
our power. Besides his collections from other writers, he has given 
