231 
XX. —Die Fabeen dee Pblanzen. Yon G-. von Martens. Wiirtt. 
Jahreshefte, 1862, p. 239. 
The first short chapter of this essay on Colour in the Vegetable 
Kingdom is upon the Rainbow, and is headed with a verse from 
Sirach (ch. xliii. 12). The second is upon the Prism and Spectrum. 
¥e pass these by and confine ourselves to a brief resume of some 
of the author’s painstaking inquiries into the colour-relations of the 
several organs of plants, of the flowers of widely different Floras, and 
of different Natural Orders. We devote the space to this the more 
willingly, that we believe such inquiries carefully carried out, and 
resting upon a basis sufficiently broad, often afford unexpectedly 
interesting results. In connection with the special inquiry pursued 
by Hr. von Martens, such results can hardly be said to have been as 
yet forthcoming, though this may be attributable to its neglect by 
competent botanists rather than to any cause more deeply seated. 
Since the observations of Professor Dickie, recorded in the Annals 
of Natural History # some eight years ago, we do not recollect 
any contribution of scientific importance upon the colour-relations of 
plants in our own or foreign journals. Prof. Dickie’s paper was 
especially upon the complementary relations of colours in the indi¬ 
vidual and the relation between the form and colour of organs,— 
branches of the subject which do not appear to have specially engaged 
the attention of our author. 
In the third chapter we have a description of the Chromatic Table, 
similar to that in Chevreul’s well-known work, which accompanies the 
essay. It is a circular disc divided by twenty-four equi-distant radii 
into as many wedges, each coloured in one hue and decreasing in inten¬ 
sity from the centre to the margin in eight degrees of tone—(Farben- 
tonleiter— Gamme, Chevreul). Some such chromatic table is essential 
in inquiries of this kind, and until a better be decided upon, we are 
content to pin up Hr. Marten’s disc in our plant room, and to respect 
his nomenclature with but few exceptions, which do not detain us 
now. In the eleven succeeding chapters, the several organs of the 
plant are seriatim examined with respect to their colour-phe¬ 
nomena. We have not, generally, the successive changes traced 
through which the plant or an individual organ passes from youth to 
age, but commencing with the lowest member of the structure, the 
root, and continued through stem, leaf, flower, fruit and seed, we 
have recorded several observations of considerable interest, among 
the more important of which are those upon the colour-relations of 
the flowers of different Floras. In Hr. v. Martens’ method of col¬ 
lating these we find some awkward peculiarities which the friendly 
* Ser. ii. xiv. 401. 
