PARLATORE’S NATURAL METIIOD. 
511 
transmutation of species, although, those who are already persuaded 
of the truth of that hypothesis, may feel themselves justified in in¬ 
terpreting the facts observed by M. Favre in accordance with it.” 
It is much better, we should say, that he does not venture, for, 
writing with some specimens of M. Fab re’s Aegilops and Triticum 
before us, we cannot think there can be much doubt but that M. 
Godron, confirmed as he has been by Planchon and others, is right in 
regarding the connecting links as hybrids. 
Some of the author’s observations in his fourth lecture upon the 
“ sense in which the term acclimatisation can be applied to the 
vegetable kingdom,” appear to us very sensible, and at the present 
time opportune. 
A list of plants, too tender to be grown in the open air in the Bo¬ 
tanical Garden, Oxford, but which bear exposure in the Scilly 
Islands, or near Falmouth, is given in an appendix; also a list of 
plants killed or affected by the winter of 1860-61 in the Oxford 
Garden. 
Should a second edition of these lectures be called for, we trust 
that Dr. Daubeny will not let them go to press •without revision and 
amendment. 
LI.— Considerations sttr la MAthode Nattjrelle en Bota- 
niqee. By P. Parlatore. Florence. 1868. 
"Were it not that we personally know Professor Parlatore to be 
a most good-natured and harmless man, we should have set him down 
at once, on the first glance through this brochure of his, as a dan¬ 
gerous character and not to be trusted with a dissecting knife ; for 
any one now-a-days professing himself a thorough-going reformer, 
whether in the scientific or political world, we are naturally prone 
to suspect. On going through the pages of this essay more care¬ 
fully, we are surprised to find that the author has found time to 
devote himself to what is of so little practical use, while the elabo¬ 
ration of the Conifers for the Prodromus, and of his valuable “ Flora 
Italiana,” might have employed him with much greater advantage to 
the botanical world as well as to himself. 
We believe that Parlatore seriously thinks that he is laying the 
foundation of a Natural Method, “quirestera toujours dans la 
science” ! It has been growing upon him for a long time that bota¬ 
nists are all in the wrong, or, at any rate, only partially in the right, 
in the matter of their so-called Natural System. One and twenty 
years ago he began to be dissatisfied with the recognised principles 
upon which the Jussieuan and De Candollean systems are based, 
imagining that botanists depended too exclusively upon single cha¬ 
racters, or characters afforded by single sets of organs. And this is 
the burden of his complaint, some seventy pages through. But every 
one else complains of the same thing, and every one, at the same 
N. H. R.—1863. 2 M 
