NOTICES OF WORKS ON BOTANY. 
353 
the rudiments of the science, may be found to facilitate the progress of 
the young beginner.” 
To the botany are appended several useful lists, and some very 
good observations on town gardens, which will be very useful to those 
who are lovers of plants, though perhaps neither gardeners nor 
botanists. 
Outlines of Botany, including a general History of the Vegetable 
Kingdom: in which Plants are arranged according to the System of 
Natural Affinities. By the late Gilbert T. Burnett, F.L.S., Professor 
of Botany in King’s College, London, and senior President of the 
Westminster Medical Society. In two volumes. Churchill, Soho, 
London. 
* 
These two volumes contain a great and valuable body of botanical 
knowledge and interesting information, and comprise the substance of 
the learned author’s lectures, delivered at the King’s College. The 
work may be called a compendium of all the best-established facts 
or opinions held by the higher ranks of scientific botanists of the 
present day, relative to the natural affinities of plants. 
As a teacher of botany, he adopts the plan of synthesis, rather than 
analysis: he begins with the lowest grade, and ascends to the highest, 
instead of the contrary, as has been done by other teachers. This is 
certainly reasonable, though it is objected to as inconvenient, because 
the lowest grade of vegetables are microscopic, and cannot so readily be 
referred to by beginners as the grosser growing kinds. 
In writing a new book on a science which has been previously treated 
of by many others, an endeavour is almost always made to give it some¬ 
what of a new character, or bear about it some marks of originality. 
This is the purpose of every author before he puts himself in the 
printer’s hands; and here we certainly have some new features, more 
especially in the Glossology, heretofore called Terminology. Newly- 
invented terms may be strictly scientific, and perfectly accurate, and, 
moreover, might be particularly useful to the students of the author’s 
own school; but their usefulness to botanists in general is perhaps 
questionable, merely because they are changes. If, on the other hand, 
we consider botany as an improving science, and meet with new terms 
which are more comprehensive, or have an aim at concentration, we 
cannot withhold approval. Whatever may be thought of the new 
titles adopted by the author, we feel bound to say that the work is 
replete with excellent matter, and with many profound philosophical 
views. To the medical student it will be a valuable directory; and 
even to the general reader, a fund of very varied information. And 
VOL. iv.— no. Li. p r 
