Illustrations of the Principal Nattiral Orders of the Vegetable Kingdom

Abstract

FEW books published of late years will be of greater practical value to the botanical teacher or student than this. The want has long been painfully felt of a work which will give in as few words as possible the salient characters of each of the more important natural orders, unencumbered by minutiae of structure which concern only the more advanced student. This want we have here most admirably supplied, not only by 150 pages of text, but by upwards of 100 plates, which present in the most lucid form a representation (plain or coloured, as may be preferred) of a section and “diagram” of a flower belonging to many orders, together with a drawing of the fruit, seed, or other organ the structure of which is of special importance. The very comprehensive title of the work might, unless the contrary is pointed out, lead to a little disappointment, when it is found that the descriptions, and still more exclusively the plates, refer almost entirely to the more important European orders; very brief accounts, or in some cases none at all, being given of such remarkable extra-European groups as the Cycadeae, Gnetaceae, Proteaceae, Bignoniaceæ, Piperaceae, and others. As far as European botany is concerned, we cannot conceive that the work could have been better carried out. The plan which has been adopted of treating separately groups which are united together into a single order in our more advanced text-books—as for instance Fumariaceae as distinct from Papaveraceæ; Oxalideas and Tropaeolaceæ from Geraniaceæ, and Droseraceæ from Saxifragaceæ—seems to us altogether commendable in a work designed especially for beginners. There has long been felt a desire that in text-books of botany the morphological and physiological portion should be divorced from the systematic and descriptive. We trust that in future this may be carried out, and that writers of text-books will confine themselves to the former branch, leaving the student to gain his elementary knowledge of the latter branch from special works like the one before us.

Illustrations of the Principal Nattiral Orders of the Vegetable Kingdom.

Prepared for the Science and Art Department of the Council of Education. By Prof. Oliver . (London, Chapman and Hall, 1874.)