induced and enabled him to engage, and which are incessantly increasing our acquaintance with the vegetable kingdom, we are indebted to it for a better national flora than we before possessed; and perhaps, with the exception of the Flora Lapponica and Suecica of Linnæus, than any other part of Europe can boast.

The late able and excellent Mr. Hudson, in the year 1762, first naturalized the sexual system in this country, by adapting it to our English plants. The ground-work of the Flora Anglica, as could not but be the case, was the well known Synopsis of Ray; and it aimed at little more than to dispose the species of that admirable author in the Linnæan method of arrangement, with the synonyms of Caspar Bauhin, and the old English botanists. In the second edition, which did not appear till the year 1778, after having been long and earnestly called for, many errors, unavoidable in a first attempt, were corrected, and many valuable particulars added. But still much was wanting to the perfection of a British flora; nor were the deficiencies supplied by the botanical arrangement of Dr. Withering, though at first respectably executed, and, in the second edition, by the aid of Dr. Jonathan Stokes, Mr. Woodward, and other friends of the author, greatly improved.

It was reserved for the possessor of the Linnæan herbarium to dispel the doubts, correct the errors, and lessen the difficulties which attended the study of British plants, notwithstanding the labours of these eminent botanists. The first two volumes of the Flora Britannica, published in the year 1800, are so well known to all naturalists both at home and abroad, that we should only tell our readers what they already know, were we to enter into a minute detail of its peculiar excellences, or to expatiate on the fullness and accuracy of the original descriptions by which almost every species is illustrated. We shall only observe, that Dr. Smith has a mind too firm, and principles too solid, to be smitten with every innovation which has been introduced into his favourite science; and, on the other hand, is too sincerely and warmly actuated by the love of truth, not to receive whatever appears to his sober judgment an improvemein of the system of his great master; and that he has therefore steered a middle course, and in these volumes has only abolished the order monogamia in the class syngenesia,

and distributed in other classes those genera of the twenty-third, in which the incomplete and the perfect flowers have the same general structure.

The third volume, which is now directly before us, begins with the class gynandria; and in this class we find nothing entitled to particular notice, except that orchis coriophora, and o. abortiva, are discarded from the British Flora, the plant in Ray's Synopsis, which had been supposed a synonym of the former, being certainly not the coriophora of Lianæus, but, as far as a judgment can be formed from the imperfect character, variety of satyrium hircinum; and that ascribed to the latter being beyond al doubt orobanche cærulea of the Flora Britannica.

In the class monacia nothing new occurs but the introduction of arum, t , the flowers of which, Dr. Smith observes, are by no means gynandrous, and, in the relative situation of the stamens and pistils, exactly resemble the regular monacions plants. Carex is the most difficult British genus of this class; but it has been so successfully investigated by Dr. Goodenough and Mr. Woodward, that nothing was left for Dr. Smith but to esta blish the davalliana as a British species, of which an imperfect specimen had been sent to those gentlemen from Scotland, and to add the four other species which also had already been described by himself, in a paper addressed to the Linnæan Society, and published in their fifth volume.

The genus salix, in the class monæcia, has long been numbered among the opprobria botanicorum. Linnæus knew only thirty-one species: of these Hudson, in his first edition, inserted seventeen as natives of Great Britain, with the addition of rubra taken up from Ray. The second edition has the same number, with some variation in the species. Withering, in his first edition, copied the eighteen of Hudson, and in his third increased the number to twenty-two: but though Linnæus acknowledged the dif culty of settling the species, the imper fection of all the descriptions then pub lished, and the necessity of studying and arranging the genus anew, little was done to diminish the confusion till the publication of the present work. Dr. Smith has ascertained forty-five British species, of all which he has drawn up ori ginal descriptions; and, though he does not offer it as a complete and perfectly

accurate enumeration, it bears all the marks of his extensive knowledge, and discriminating judgment. Unfortunately he has, in some instances, been able to obtain the plants of only one sex, and has been obliged to leave the character of the species so far imperfect. It is possible, moreover, that some which he has published as new may prove varieties of species already described; and he himself informs us, in the addenda and corrigenda, annexed to this volume, that his malifolia is probably a variety of s. hastata of Linnæus; but, as he had not admitted that species, no diminution is hereby made of the British species. We learn also from a late number of English botany, that having seen only the leaves of a plant, found on the mountains of Scotland, he erroneously supposed it the myrtilloides of Linnæus; but the catkins, which have since been produced, prove it to be clearly a new species, which he now calls Dicksoniana, in honour of its first well-known discoverer. The true myrtilloides has not been found in Great Britain. Another new species has also been recently figured in that work, which has been found in Norfolk by Mr. Crowe, to which the trivial name birta is given. Dr. Smith acknowledges his great obligation to the friendly communications of this gentleman, and Mr. Dickson, in his study of this intricate genus. The subdivisions of Linnæus, founded on the margin and surface of the leaves, are retained for the present; but Dr. Smith is of opinion that much better may be formed, taken from the germen, as it is either sessile, or pedicelled; the style, as it is either elongated, very short, or none; and the stigma, as it is either entire, or bipar. tite.

In conformity with the principles which he had adopted, our author was obliged to leave atriplex alone in the class polygamia. We regret the necessity of separating it so widely from chenopodium, to which it is so nearly allied in habit and general characters: and, did not the numerous exotic genera stand in the way, we should be inclined to consider the different structure of the female flower as only a generic distinction, and place this new solitary British plant by the side of its natural relative. It is in the class cryptogamia, where Linnæus had left the most to be done, that the greatest improvement was to be

expected from the good sense and acuteness of the president of the Linnæan so ciety.

The filices he has divided into annulate, with capsules encircled by an elastic ring; and exannulate, without that appendage; and has thus abolished Schreber's very unscientific order, miscellaneæ. He has admitted, of course, the new genera gothea and hymenophyllum, which was established by himself in his dissertation on ferns, printed by the Turin Academy; the former taken from polypodium, on account of the hemispherical calyx which bursts at the top without an operculum; the latter from trichomanes, on account of its two-valved involu. crum. Since the publication of that dissertation, he has adopted the opinion of Swartz in separating also from polypodium, under the name of aspidium, such species as have an umbilicated involucrum, leaving, in the original genus polypodium, only those which have no involucrum at all. He had already, in the Turin dissertation, taken scolopendrium and ceterach from asplenium, and united them under the old generic name scolopendrium. On the other hand, he considers acrosticum septentrionale of Linnæus, and other authors, as a true asplenium. Pilularia and isoetes, he conjectures, may not improperly be removed; the former to monæcia polyandria, and the latter to monæcia monandria.

It was not till after mature deliberation, and the caution suited to his cha racter, that he has been induced to embrace Hedwig's system of mosses as a substitute for the acknowledged very imperfect one of Linnæus; and, after all, he has admitted only such of its parts as are the easiest in practice, and seem to have the best foundation in nature.

In consequence of his new generic characters, anictangium of Hedwig is absorbed in gymnostomum; weissia, in grimmia; fissidens, in dicranum; barbula, in tortula; leskea, in hypnum ; webbera, pohlia, and meesia, in bryum; didymodon, and cynontodium, in trichostomum, with the exception of such species as have only sixteen teeth in the fringe, which are referred to grimmia.

The complex and irregular orders, alga and fungi, remain yet unpublished; and we are sorry to learn from a recent periodical publication, that the excellent author has been interrupted in his stu

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dies by a painful disorder in his eyes, a complaint peculiarly unpropitious to a student of cryptogamous plants. But we earnestly hope that it will not be long before we see this first-rate production completed; and we trust that he will then think of rendering another great and much desired service to the Flora of his native land. Hitherto he has written for the learned; and, considering that his work will be sought for by the botanists of all Europe, he has done well to communicate his knowledge in a language universally understood by men of liberal education. But his fair countrywomen have a claim upon him which, we are persuaded, he has too much gallantry to contemn or to neglect. We know that numbers of them impatiently wait for the time, when the access to this enchanting science shall be rendered more easy and pleasant to them than it has yet been. Dr. Hull's British Flora is a useful companion in their walks abroad, and when they travel to a distance in a postchaise; but it is too concise to afford them every needful assistance at home; and Dr. Withering's larger work is often more perplexing than instructive, owing to the different descriptions of the same plant, either translated from foreign authors, or communicated to him by English friends, which, in many places, do not exactly correspond with each other, and, in fact, do not always belong to the same species. The simple, but full and perspicuous descriptions of Dr. Smith are precisely what they want. A brief introduction to the science, written in his natural lively style, and with his original train of thought, would also be peculiarly acceptable; and we are persuaded that it would be drawn up by him in such a manner, as entirely to remove the objec tions which are often made to the admission of females into this part of the temple of science. The study of botany, it is generally acknowledged, would be admirably suited to the natural elegance of their taste, and to their quick sense of the beautiful, the curious, and the useful, if it were not for the indelicate terms which are thought to be insepara bly attached to the sexual system. The complaint, we confess, has not been entirely without foundation. When almost every writer talks of the male and female organs of generation in plants, and when the prurient imagination of a Darwin is

tickled with the idea, that he had caught two anthers belonging to neighbouring flowers in the very act of adultery, it is no wonder that a prudent father, and a trembling mother, wish to exclude such shameless books from a daughter's small and selected library. But we assert with confidence, because we speak from experience, that the fault has not been in the science, but in those who profess to teach it. We are sure that all which is necessary to be known of the sexual system, may be taught to a circle of young ladies who have attained to the age of sixteen, without forcing a blush into the cheeks of the most modest, or producing a smile on the countenance of the most lively and sportive. The simple truth, that in this respect there is some analogy be tween the vegetable and animal creation, when told in a few guarded words, will excite in them no ideas which are not already familiar to their minds, and which do not daily occur to their notice, without hurting their sensibility, or awakening a single improper feeling. They speak continually of a horse and a mare, a ram and an ewe, a cock and a hen, with a vague idea of the difference, and with nothing more; and why may they not be told, that there is a similar distinction in every part of organized nature? If it can be done with innocence and própriety in the case of animals, it must be still less exceptionable in the case of vegetables; for, in fact, there is in these nothing more than a remote analogy, without the shadow of a resemblance; and, when the general statement has once been made, there is no reason why it should ever be repeated, or brought again into view. To the recurrence of the words male and fr male there could, perhaps, be no valid objection; but hermaphrodite is an ugly term, which cannot be decently explained, and which we should earnestly wish might never pass their lips, or meet their eyes. It is, therefore, in our judgment, best to banish all three from common use, and to speak only of stamens and pistils; stameniferous, pistiliferous, and com plete flowers. We are well aware that our great master has offended, in this respect, at least as much as any of his disci ples: but he wrote in Latin; and it is generally supposed that, since that lan guage has ceased to be a living one, nothing written in it can be liable to the charge of gross obscenity, scarcely of a