TIVO BOOKS ABOUT WILD FLOWERS. 153 
“ tabular view of the Natural Families,” followed by a “ table for determining the 
genus,” this latter being arranged on the Linnean system. Then follows the 
descriptive portion of the book, or “ tables for determining the species,” occupy- 
ing about 400 of the 445 pages which the volume comprises. This is arranged on 
the analytical method, with indications of frequency, geographical distribution, 
&c. , all of them of value in making the book of practical use. 'I'he critical 
student will find such genera as Salix, Cenlaurea, Hieraciiim, Euphrasia, and the 
like, carefully worked out. 
The only points for unfavourable criticism are to be found in the somewhat 
frequent misprints in the spelling of the Latin names, and in the somewhat un- 
familiar words which do duty lor their English equivalents — such as “ Helio- 
sperm,” “ Helminth,” and others constructed on the principle familiar to British 
botanists from its employment in Bentham’s Handbook. We must repeat that 
this Swiss Flora will not supply the empirical knowledge of plants which some- 
times contents the tourist ; but to the botanist who knows how to use his Bentham, 
his Babington, or his Students' flora, it will be of the greatest possible service. 
A reviewer’s duty is not always pleasant. It is pleasant enough, of course, to 
recommend good books, and to feel that by so doing one is helping to extend 
their sphere of usefulness ; but it is not so agreeable, although equally a duty, to 
condemn bad ones, and to dissuade folks from purchasing them. And yet the 
latter must be our course with regard to Miss Blues’ Rambles in Search of Wild 
Floivers, of which Messrs. Bell and Son have just published what they call a 
“fourth edition, revised.” We have not been able to consult the original work, 
which was issued in 1863, and we are therefore able charitably to suppose that the 
reviser, and not the author, is responsible for the errors with which the book 
teems. Even if the blunders are not of recent insertion, the reviser who passed 
them over is blameworthy ; but without them the book would be none the less 
incomplete — indeed, a harsher term would not be out of place. Miss Blues 
makes little attempt to describe the plants she mentions, nor does she give any 
account of her rambles. Following the sequence of the natural orders, she enume- 
rates the various wild flowers, adding the locality in which she found them. There 
is a good deal of agreeable gossip interspersed, which, like most gossip, is often 
inaccurate ; and also a fair sprinkling of poetical quotations (sometimes misap- 
plied), but of aid towards the identification of our British plants there is very 
little indeed. The coloured plates are, we are compelled to say, the worst we 
have ever seen, some of the figures — e.g., the Fumitory on plate i, the Milkwort 
and Tamarisk on plate 2, the Cornel on plate 6, and many more — being unidentifi- 
able save for the names printed beneath them, and the cuts in the text are in some 
instances wrongly lettered ; thus the Enchanter’s Nightshade is named Germander 
Speedwell (p. 229) ; while two plants are figured as the “ Wall Speedwell ” (p. 
231)) “ Veronica muralis and V. arvensis," the former name being foreign to the 
British flora. 
It is necessary to give two or three examples in support of the charges made, 
and for these we need not go beyond the first chapter. The “ Feathered Colum- 
bine ” of gardens is not our wild Meadow Rue, but a foreign species. We should 
like to know on what authority healing properties are assigned to the Wood Ane- 
mone ; A. apennina is certainly not found in Wales, nor anywhere as a British 
plant; and it was not in Herefordshire but in Hertfordshire that the Yellow 
Anemone was at one time stated to occur. The Bheasant’s-eye cannot be said to 
“frequent” cornfields, though it sometimes occurs in them; ’‘'■Ranunculus 
alpina ” (alpestris), so far from “frequenting the summit of our higher mountains,” 
has only been reported from P'orfar by George Don, and has long since disappeared 
from our books ; the Marsh Marigold was not in olden time “called Mary’s Gold, 
after the Blessed Virgin.” We take these from the first chapter, from which 
many more inaccuracies might be extracted ; and the book is full of similar 
errors and worse, as when the Myrtle is described as “a foreign member of 
the olive tribe” (p. 201). As to the poetry, both .Shakespere’s and Tenny- 
son’s “ Long Burples” are identified as Sedges (p. 323), “which we know is 
not the case ” (to quote the Pirates of Penzance) ; and neither Shakespere nor 
Keats intended the Yellow Oxeye when they spoke of Marigolds (p. 186). “ Miss 
Barrett ”(p. 89) is better known as Mrs. Browning; and the “Twamly”with 
