covering that their profession has a scientific basis. What wonder, then, that the Botanical class is the bugbear of the curriculum, and Botany the terror of the degree examination. And not only is this so now, but it has been so for the best part of half a century; whilst, strange to say, no steps have been taken to rectify it, none either to inquire into its cause or suggest a remedy. Courses and examinations go on as if both were what they should be. As the knowledge and complexity of every branch of Botany expands, the bigger the text-books grow, the fuller the lectures, the harder the Professors work, the duller the student; till now the clamour is, not to improve the training, but to abandon it altogether!

Nor can we wonder that its abandonment should be proposed when we see the results of the present system of lecturing. What these are any Professor can answer. Let us ask such, what is the consequence of putting a common plant into the hands of a candidate when he presents himself for his degree? Is it not notorious that there is nothing in his whole professional examination which the trembling probationer dreads more than this? Is it not painful to witness the vacant stare with which, in most cases, he regards the flower-his bungling attempts to separate its parts-his imbecile efforts to recall the names, order, and significance of its organs-the misshapen mass of crumpled sepals, petals, and stamens which he lets fall from his fingers, when his little all is exhausted, and the deep dejected look appears that says, as plainly as words can say, "Plucked for Botany."

The only remedy for the existing state of matters is, to make the Botanical training objective and practical, at the same time that it is scientific and improving, for by such means alone can it be made instructive and attractive. Let the student be taught at first truths he can perceive and apply, and he will insensibly be led to take an interest in his own progress, and to improve himself. Keep his eyes, hands, and brain employed together, and they will find work for one another afterwards. He must be dull indeed who does not soon perceive that a branch of Natural History thus pursued, quickens both the intellect and senses in an extraordinary degree, besides inducing such essentially scientific habits of observation and comparison as are indispensable to a good practitioner.

It only remains to observe, that we know of no work so well suited to direct the Botanical pupil's efforts as that the title of which heads

this article. Professor Henslow's logical mind, his practical views and accurate methods, no less than his immense range of scientific knowledge, qualified him singularly, whether as Professor or schoolmaster, for instructing youth; and his success, both at Cambridge and in his own parish school, was proverbial. It is most fortunate for his memory and our subject that his manuscripts have fallen into the hands of a teacher who, with views as practical, and with great knowledge too, can write so accurately and clearly as Professor Oliver has done; and it is much to be wished that Botanical teachers would profit by Henslow's great experience as Professor and Examiner, would simplify their courses most materially, render their lessons practical, and, above all, take such means as the schedule system and selection of types afford, of ascertaining weekly that their pupils do know the organs of plants, their order of development, relations, systematic significance, and functions. So long as not one in ten of the Botanical students can do this well at their degree-examinationsand such we affirm now to be the case-the Botanical class will deservedly be held in disrepute by a large body of medical men, and Botany will remain, as now, the "bête noire" of the medical student.

LI.-SOUTH-EUROPEAN FLORAS.

(1).-PRODROMUS FLORE HISPANICE, auctoribus Mauritio Willkomm et Joanni Lange. Vol. I. Stuttgartiæ, 1861.

(2).-FLORA ITALIANA, di Filippo Parlatore, Vol. I. to III. Firenze, 1848 to 1858.

(3).-PRODROMO DELLA FLORA TOSCANA, di Teodoro Caruel. Parts I. to III. Firenze, 1860 to 1863.

THE European vegetation, with reference to its general geographical distribution, may be divided into three great floras or types, each having its peculiar features, indicative of origin and sources of dispersion:-1, The high northern and Alpine; 2, the general temperate; and 3, the southern or Mediterranean Floras.

The first or northern and Alpine Flora is characterised by the extensive range of the majority of its species, either continuous in northern latitudes, where local and climatological circumstances admit of it, or interrupted southward by immense intervals which appear absolutely insurmountable under present circumstances,

whilst the really local species are very few indeed. Consisting chiefly of plants of small stature, slow growth, and limited means of dispersion, compensated by long lives and great powers of endurance, any theory of their spreading by any present means of intercommunication between the Pyrenees, Alps, Himalayas, and northern regions appears inexplicable; and we feel compelled to concur in the hypothesis so ably laid down by Dr. Hooker in his Outlines of the Distribution of Arctic Plants, that this flora is of the greatest antiquity and of Scandinavian origin, from whence it spread over distant regions in former glacial periods, and by subsequent physical changes has, in central and southern Europe, become restricted to the great chains of the Pyrenees, Alps and Carpathians, and higher ranges of Turkey and Greece. In these mountains some of these species have been enabled to hold their ground over the whole range at suitable elevations, whilst others, like Menziesia cærulea in the Pyrenees and Saxifraga nivalis in the Sudetic mountains, are now restricted to isolated stations, although, in the north, they retain their range over thousands of miles. Further evidence of the antiquity of this flora may be derived from its almost total absence from the more recent volcanic mountains of central France. The Monts d'Or and Cantal, at an elevation of 6000 feet, offer scarcely any of those alpine and subalpine plants which abound at the same or lower elevations, in the Pyrenees on the one side, and in the Alps on the other, as well as in the British and Scandinavian mountains to the north.

In this Flora we would not include those plants of the Alps and Pyrenees, even the most alpine, which do not extend to the north, as they generally partake of all the characteristics of the southern flora; nor even such alpine species as Cherleria sedoides, which, although extending to the north of Scotland, shows by its wide range, from the Pyrenees to the Turkish Alps, and its absence from Scandinavia and N. Russia, a southern not a Scandinavian origin.

2nd, The general temperate Flora-a mongrel vegetation of mixed origin, including a large proportion of species of the most extended geographical range, with a very few local ones, and those chiefly in the extreme west. The majority, whether trees, shrubs, or herbs, are plants of comparatively rapid growth, very prolific, endowed with great facilities for dispersion, and constitutions capable of adapting themselves to a great variety of physical and climatological conditions. They are great travellers, and soon take possession of any

district left denuded by any great convulsion of nature, or by the abandonment of cultivation. To the great majority of them no primeval antiquity can be ascribed in Central or Western Europe; they appear to have come from the East, a considerable number perhaps from Western Asia, where their types appear to be more varied, but many also must have made half the tour of the globe. Large American genera have sent out offsets into Eastern Asia, which gradually diminishing in number of species, and sometimes slightly modifying their characters, have spread over the whole of Asia, and invaded almost every part of Europe. These plants are moreover generally continuous, that is, interrupted only by intervals which under present conditions they have means of crossing, and they are abundant in individuals, ascending in latitude and elevation, or descending to the south until checked in their career by competing species better enabled to endure the increasing rigour or the searching drought of the respective climates. Many of them will even assume slight modifications suited to their exceptional circumstances, and it is then as difficult to separate them from the genuine northern or southern Floras as it is in many cases to give plausible grounds for establishing the precise origin of individual species.

Mixed with this travelled Flora there are in the West of Europe a certain number of local genera and species which appear to have been more ancient possessors of the soil -the remains perhaps of that hypothetical Atlantic vegetation speculated upon by modern botanical geographers, Ulices and other Genisteæ, Ericas, Lobelias, Sibthorpias, most Cistineæ, etc. are purely western types, continually checked in their eastern dispersion, and perhaps gradually more and more confined to the western territory by their more fortunately endowed invaders. Many of them cease abruptly at a degree or two from the west coast, without having apparently any strictly maritime requirements, whilst the few temperate eastern species which are not in the extreme west, are usually very gradual in their diminution and disappearance.

Both the above Floras may now be considered as tolerably well known, both as to diagnosis and dispersion. Innumerable works have been devoted to the vegetation of every district in northern and central Europe, and what additions are now made to it are so-called critical species, i.e. local forms, or casual intruders from accident or design.

The third, southern or Mediterranean Flora, is, perhaps, the most interesting to the speculating botanist, whilst it is at the same time the least known. By far the richest and the most diversified in species, it is also remarkable for the great variations centering round individual types, as well as for the very restricted areas occupied by a number of the most marked species; the limits are not to be accounted for by any physical peculiarities we are acquainted with, nor perhaps to be otherwise explained than by a supposition of very great antiquity, and great and repeated changes or convulsions of nature since their first establishment. The species on the other hand which have any extended range beyond the immediate circuit of the Mediterranean, are chiefly those which this Flora has in common with that of central Europe above mentioned, or a very few subtropical ones encroaching upon the southernmost points.

The territory occupied in Europe by this southern Flora may be divided into three regions, which may be named after the three great southern peninsulas, the Spanish, the Italian, and the Grecian regions; the former including Portugal on the one hand and the Balearic islands on the other, and extending up to the dividing ridge of the Pyrenees; the Italian, including Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, and extending up to the dividing ridge of the Alps of Switzerland; the Grecian, including Crete and Dalmatia, and in the north-east extending to the dividing ridge of the Balkan. The Spanish and Italian are connected by Mediterranean France up to the Cevennes, the Italian and Grecian by Istria.

These three regions enjoy nearly equally the benefits of a southern latitude; the Spanish and Italian (including Malta) extending to about 36°, the Grecian (including Crete) to about 35°; all three are bounded to the north by a chain of mountains in which vegetation is limited by perpetual snow, the Pyrenees rising to 11,170 feet, the Alps to 15,780 feet; and the Turkish mountains to above 9000 feet (according to some authorities). Each of them includes a fair proportion of limestone and primitive formations, the two principal geological features influencing vegetation; all three have a great extent of seaboard, each has the surface diversified by a large proportion of scorched rocks, open arid pastures, or cultivated hills and plains, with a more limited extent of dense forests, swamps, or lagoons, and they are at no great distance from each other in point of longitude; there would seem indeed, a priori, to be all the elements of uniformity in their vegetation, and yet the differences are