NEW BOOKS, WITH SHORT NOTICES. 
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us such a mass of liis own investigations as must excite our admira- 
tion. Wc have now a compact and convenient book, with twenty -four 
plates, all from drawings by the author, which will afford us materials 
for forming some judgment of the taxonomic importance of pollen. 
Botanists have of late rated this as not worth much. At first they 
thought too highly of it. Finding certain forms of it common in 
certain orders, it was supposed to be generally of ordinal value ; hut 
exceptions became so numerous that this view had to be modified. 
Still the facts remain that pollen often has this high classificatory 
significance ; that whatever exceptions occur ought to he duly noted 
and registered ; and that sometimes it may he only of generic or 
even specific value. For example, Ranunculus arvensis is known at 
once from its nearest allies by its large and muricated pollen-grains, 
as they were originally described and figured, by Professor Gulliver, 
in ‘ Seemann’s Journal of Botany,’ September 1866; and Mr. Edge- 
worth confirms the truth of this curious observation, though it does 
not appear that he knew how old it is. 
But all such irregularities are perhaps puzzling chiefly from the 
want of more investigations. The truth is that our knowledge is so 
imperfect that nature often revolts from and refuses conformity 
to even the best systematic classifications. Thus we have the 
acotyledonous Cuscuta in the midst of Dicotyledons, and odd 
differences of form in the embryo of Solanacese ; the exogenous 
Draccena among the Endogens ; anomalies in the placenta of Mesem- 
bryacem, and in the albumen of Nelumbiaceae, Butacese, and 
Orontiaceae ; the strange insertion of the stamens in certain Plum- 
baginaceae. These, and many other like perplexities, well known to 
botanists, might well have given them some patience for the vagaries 
of the pollen. But, after all, it cannot be denied that it often affords 
valuable characters, and that these are a part of the great whole 
which composes the cell-biography of plants, and which must be 
learned before we can acquire a faithful knowledge of their true 
nature ; and to this end surely microscopic investigations cannot be 
dispensed with, as they have long injuriously been and still are by 
systematists. But all this must be reformed if we expect to arrive at 
a true description and interpretation of the vegetable kingdom. 
And the present author contributes his contingent thereto. His 
eight introductory pages contain a summary account of the pollen, 
immediately followed by sixty more pages, in which we have a list of 
the plants of which the pollen has been described, those marked by 
an asterisk being such as he himself has examined and measured. 
The whole are classified according to the so-called natural system ; 
and so too are the concluding twenty pages, these containing double 
columns and explanations of the plates. 
Incidentally the author makes such observations on raphides as 
seem to indicate that he is alive to their taxonomic importance, and to 
this extent in advance of the systematists. And thus far he is rather 
in accord with the views of Professor Gulliver, as given in the 
remarks appended to his “ list of plants which afford raphides,” &c., 
published in the last September number of this Journal. Mr. Edge- 
