104 
REVIEWS. 
First Lessors ir Botary ard Vegetable Physiology. Illustrated by 
over 360 "Wood Engravings from Original Drawings by Isaac 
Sprague. To which is added a Copious Glossary, or Dictionary of 
Botanical Terms, by Asa Gray Fisher, Professor of Natural His¬ 
tory in Harvard University. 1858. 
"We have carefully looked over this volume, written in simple language, 
illustrated by extremely well executed woodcuts, and think it will 
form a very useful addition to our list of school manuals. We would 
have no hesitation in putting it into the hands of any student in Bo¬ 
tany. We think it would make a very useful text-book for Professors 
of Botany, or for the Lecturers in our various schools. It comprises a 
very full account of the structure, organs, growth, and reproduction of 
plants; and we quite agree with the author that these subjects ought 
to be as generally understood by all educated people as the elements of 
Natural Philosophy or Astronomy are, and they are quite as easy to 
be learned. We have reason to believe that of late years Botany has 
become a very general study; but until the present volume we have 
met with no work which gave the same amount of useful knowledge 
for so small a sum of money. The illustrations are, with one or two 
exceptions, all original, and were drawn from Nature by Mr. Sprague, 
the well-known botanical artist; they have been very freely introduced 
into this volume. 
From one statement of Professor Asa Gray’s we would venture to 
dissent, viz., that there is a positive harm in introducing questions at 
the end of either the lessons or chapters. We hold that if the questions 
be of a proper character, they are a most important element in a work 
like the present, and they should be of such a nature as not to afford 
facilities either to teach or learn by rote; on the contrary, they should 
be so framed as to be perfectly useless to a teacher; while they should 
set the mind of the student himself a-thinking—questions of which the 
answers, although, of course, to be inferred from the chapters to which 
they are appended, yet should not be arrived at writhout a due amount 
of deliberation upon the subject contained in the chapter. 
We understand that Messrs. Triibner and Co., London, are the Bri¬ 
tish agents for these useful Lessons. 
Messrs. Trubrer ard Co.’s Catalogue of Americar Works or Natural 
History. 
Through the kindness of Messrs. Triibner and Co., we are enabled to 
present our readers with a copy of this valuable Catalogue of American 
Works on the Natural Sciences published during the last forty years. 
This Catalogue evinces a great deal of patient research, and is, we think, 
one of the most useful things of the sort yet published. We would 
