742 ) 
[December, 
ANALYSES OF BOOKS. 
Flowers and their Pedigrees . By Grant Allen. London : 
Longmans and Co. 
We have here a reproduction of certain botanical essays — con- 
ceived under Evolutionist inspiration — which have appeared in 
various literary journals, and which have done no little to- 
wards popularising what may emphatically be called the New 
Natural History. 
That the work before us is interesting and suggestive the 
author’s name will be a sufficient guarantee. Nevertheless there 
are points brought forward upon which issue may not unfairly 
be joined. 
In the first of the essays before us, the “ Daisy’s Pedigree,” 
we find a very high claim put in for the great natural order of 
Compositae. Says Mr. Allen, “ It may perhaps at first hearing 
sound absurd to say that the daisy group, including these other 
Composites with tinted rays, forms the very head and crown of 
the vegetable creation, as man does in the animal creation, and 
yet it is none the less true. . : . If we take complexity and per- 
fection in the adaptation of the organism to its surroundings as 
our gauge of comparative evolution, then the daisies must rank 
in the very first line of plant economy. . . . Thus from the 
strict biological point of view it becomes quite clear that the 
daisies, asters, chrysanthemums, and other rayed Composites 
with coloured outer florets, really stand to other plants in the 
same relation as man stands to other animals.” 
However, the author’s mind is fortunately not entirely made 
up. On p. 150 he writes : — “ Alike by their inferior ovary, their 
bilateral shape, their single stamen, their remarkable forms, 
their brilliant colours, and their occasional mimicry of inseCt 
life, the orchids show themselves to be by far the highest of the 
trinary flowers, — if not, indeed, of the entire vegetable world.” 
This is a different, and we must beg leave to add a much more 
satisfactory, doCtrine. We are, of course, aware that human 
views of beauty or ugliness cannot be allowed to decide phytolo- 
gical rank. Yet when all due allowance has been made for the 
Dahlia, the Zinnia, the Cineraria, the Aster, &c., the Composite 
include so many uncomely forms — not forgetting that idol of our 
modern pseudo-aesthetic school, the sunflower — that we groan in 
spirit at seeing this order placed at the head of the vegetable 
world. Hence we cannot but rejoice to find the author, partially 
