LADIES’ BOTANY. 
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duplicato-racemose, in others corymbose, and in others umbellate, 
without which characters there would he no certainty of the species. 
The peduncle or flower-stalk, which is the foundation of the charac¬ 
ters of inflorescence, varies as to the manner of its supporting the 
flowers, and is said to be flaccid, wanting firmness, bernuos, nodding, 
Patulus, spreading, Teru, coming by threes from the same axilla. 
Articulate, jointed, Hexouse, bending divers ways, or undulate, 
waved, or Incrassate, thickened towards the flower. 
The parts of fructification often furnish most certain, and constant 
specific distinctions. Linnaeus was once of a contrary opinion, and 
held, that as the flower was of short duration, and its parts commonly 
minute, recourse should not be had to the fructification for specific 
differences, till all other ways had been tried and found ineffectual; 
but as the fructifications contains more distinct parts than all the rest 
of the plant taken together, and certitude found throughout nature to 
depend mostly on her minuter parts, he has since readily admitted 
this distinction. 
In Gentiana, the species cannot any way be distinguished, if the 
flower is not admitted as a specific character; but they are easily 
distinguished by their corollae, which vary, in being rotate, campa- 
nulate, infundibiliform, quadrifid, quinquefid, &c. 
In Hypericum, the species are distinguished by the flowers being 
trigyndus, or pentagynous. 
In Geranium, the African species are distinguishable from their 
European congeners by the corolla being irregular, and also by the 
connexion of the stamina. 
F. F. Ashford. 
REVIEW. 
Article VIII.—LADIES’ BOTANY, OR A FAMILIAR INTRODUCTION 
TO THE STUDY OF THE NATURAL SYSTEM OF BOTANY. 
By John Lindley, ph. d. f. r. s. &c. —Professor of Botany in the University of 
London. 
8vo. Cloth Boards, Plates 16s plain ; 25s. highly Coloured. 
This little book has been written, in the hope that it may be useful 
as an elementary introduction to the modern method of studying 
systematic Botany, and in our judgment it is admirably adapted to 
this end. It consists of twenty-five familiar, amusing and instruc¬ 
tive letters, each of which explains two, three, or more of the Natu¬ 
ral Orders, forming in the whole fifty-eight. There are twenty neat 
