of the subject. Engaging Professor Link to accompany him during the first twelvemonths, he spent two years in collecting materials, and on his return to Germany, in conjunction with Link, he commenced, under the double title of "Flore Portugaise" and "Flora Lusitanica," a splendid large folio work, with coloured plates, the text in Latin and French, arranging the plants under Natural Orders. The first part was issued in 1809, and it continued till 1820, through a first and a great portion of a second volume. It was then however stopped, with the exception of a single part, published many years after, without finishing even the Gamopetala, with which it commenced. But had it even been completed, its bulk and enormous cost would always have interfered with its practical utility.

A less pretentious, but equally beautiful and far more useful work is Ed. Boissier's "Voyage Botanique dans le Midi de l'Espagne pendant l'année 1837," commenced in 1839 and completed in 1845, in quarto, with above 200 plates. This may be considered as a Flora of the Sierra Nevada and its environs, with detailed Latin descriptions, and many valuable botanical observations and criticisms. The same distinguished Swiss botanist has also published a great number of Spanish plants in his "Elenchus," "Diagnoses," etc. Our own countryman, P. B. Webb, author of the "Phytographia Canariensis," who had, under the title of "Iter Hispaniense," given an enumeration of the plants collected by him in Spain and Portugal, commenced also an illustrated work entitled "Otia Hispanica," which however never went beyond a first part with ten plates. Willkomm's beautifully illustrated "Icones et Descriptiones plantarum novarum criticarum et rariorum Europa austro-occidentalis," in quarto, may be considered as specially a Spanish work; the second volume, not yet we believe quite complete, is interesting as an almost general illustrated monograph of Cistineæ. Cambessèdes' "Enumeratio plantarum quas in insulis Balearicis collegit," in the fourteenth volume of the "Mémoires du Muséum," was one of the first productions which seemed to promise a distinguished career for a young botanist of great ability, whom unfortunately extraneous circumstances have since withdrawn from the pursuit of science. This memoir is one of the first instances of the general geographical range of a species having been usefully introduced into a local Flora. We have also an enumeration of Gibraltar plants in Kelaart's "Flora Calpensis," various notices of South Spanish plants by Cosson, and some other works and papers on Spanish botany of minor importance. All the

above-mentioned works by foreigners follow the natural system in the arrangement of the plants treated of.

So bulky a library, from which the Flora of the Peninsula is to be extracted is however perfectly useless to the traveller, of little avail to the resident student, and very troublesome for the investigations of the general botanist. It is, therefore, with great satisfaction that we hail the appearance of so excellent, compendious, and practically useful a work as Willkomm and Lange's Prodromus. We have as yet only the first volume, or part, including the Ferns, Monocotyledons and Monochlamyds, or rather more than one-fourth of the total number of species, but these are comprised in little more than 300 pages, so that we may hope that the whole will bind up in two moderate-sized volumes. The work bears the title of a Prodromus only, for, says the author, "Opus .... Flora titulum non sibi vindicat, sed fundamentum solum constituere debet Flora Hispanica, quæ non nisi a botanicis Hispanicis confici potest;" but it contains nearly all that we really look for in a regular Flora, and is all the more useful for its conciseness. It is the joint work of Dr. Maurice Willkomm, Professor of Natural History at the Royal Academy of Tharand, in Saxony, and of Dr. J. Lange, Professor of Botany at the Royal University of Copenhagen. The former had travelled over the western provinces of the Peninsula in 1845 and 1846, and again visited the northern provinces in 1850, with the intention of exploring Western Spain and Portugal, but was suddenly recalled to Germany. He has since devoted himself chiefly to the study of the Spanish Flora, and besides the illustrated work above-mentioned has published several papers on the subject in the Linnæa, the Flora, and the Botanische Zeitung. Dr. Lange, after spending the seasons of 1851 and 1852 in exploring various parts of the Peninsula, especially the western provinces of Spain and Portugal, returned to Copenhagen with immense stores of specimens, of which he published a selection in the Meddelelser (Communications) of the Natural History Society of that city. His co-operation in a projected synopsis of Spanish plants was secured by Willkomm, of which the present work is the result, each author signing his own contributions to the joint work. It would appear, however, that there had not been always a complete interchange of specimens, for in the orders worked up by Willkomm, we find occasionally not only stations given on the authority of Lange, but even some of his new species, inserted with the mark (n. v.) or non vidi.

The form, arrangement, and typography of the work are very good. Short and well contracted ordinal, generic and specific characters, economy of synonyms, without the useless display of erudition so frequent in works of the kind, and the stations very well given; first, the general habitat and area in the country, followed by more special localities, with the authorities for each; and lastly, the extraSpanish range of the species. Care is taken, by the addition, as is usual, of the note of exclamation to the authority quoted, to distinguish those stations which have been verified by the inspection of specimens ; but it is to be regretted that the same note of exclamation is also used to indicate the having verified a reference to the page and plate of a book. This creates some confusion, as where we find, for instance, the note attached to a reference to Boissier and Reuter's Pugillus in the case of a species marked (n. v.) The elder De Candolle used the asterisk, when the verification had been with a description or plate, not with a specimen.

Another great and unusual convenience in this Flora is that the necessary characters are in each case given in one single description, not distributed into two separate ones (so-called diagnoses and description) according as they are à priori considered as essential or not. Thus, form and number are usually inserted in the diagnosis, from which colour and dimensions are rigorously excluded, even where the latter are more constant than the former. But our authors appear to have sought their characters whenever they have been thought useful, without any abstract appreciation of their value. In the case of orders, genera, and sections these characters are given in the nominative case; in that of species, in the ablative or diagnostic form,--a conformity with established custom, which, while it has no great advantage, is not attended with any very particular inconvenience, when not too long.

As to the species and genera admitted, the authors go rather further perhaps, than we can quite approve, but at the same time, in the present volume at least, they are far from running into the excesses of the Jordan school. The Trichonemas and some others specifically distinguished by the comparative lengths of the styles and stamens will probably have to be reduced as dimorphisms; here and there a supposed hybrid is raised to the false rank of species; and cultivated plants, which have not established themselves in an apparently wild state, ought surely not to have been numbered with the others, even though they are distinguished by an asterisk. Nearly two pages,

for instance, occupied by ten supposed species of cultivated wheat, might well have been spared. The work would also have been still more useful had Portugal been included in the general plan, which would not much have extended the work, more especially as the majority of Portuguese plants are included among the "Species inquirendæ," enumerated at the end of orders or tribes, as species which for their extra-Spanish geographical range may still be expected to be found within Spanish limits. We would object also to some systematic innovations in the arrangement of the Natural Orders (p. xxi). Although the Candollean series revised is that generally followed by Willkomm, there are some remarkable exceptions which we regret as interfering uselessly with the practical convenience of the work, without any real scientific improvement. The Gamopetalous Orders, with inferior ovaries, are removed from their ordinary position, connecting the remaining Gamopetala with the epigynous Calyciflora, and placed at the commencement of Gamopetalæ next to Monochlamydea, with which they have really much less affinity. The Monocotyledons are very inconveniently placed between the Gymnosperms and the Angiospermous Dicotyledons with which they are in some cases so closely connected; and the inclusion of the Loranthaceae among the Gymnosperms, according to views of Schleiden and a few other theorists rejected by the most experienced practical botanists, is, to say the least, very puzzling to those for whose use this work is intended. On the whole, however, we know

of no Flora of an important territory which was more called for, has been conceived on a better plan, or more satisfactorily worked out, than Willkomm and Lange's Prodromus, and we have only to hope that nothing will prevent this friendly association of a German and a Dane from bringing their joint work to a speedy conclusion.

The Italian Flora has been for above a century at least, the object of the researches of botanists of eminence, too numerous for their names even to be here recorded, and yet there exists but one general Flora of the whole peninsula, Bertoloni's "Flora Italica," in ten octavo volumes; a work to which the venerable Professor had devoted the greater portion of a long life, and of which the publication was steadily persevered in, from 1833 when the first volume was issued, to 1854 when it was completed. It gives evidence of great pains and research, the limits of the territory chosen are those natural ones which we have above assigned to the Italian region; the descriptions are carefully and conscientiously drawn up, and yet

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the work is far from being as useful as it might have been. It is bulky, it is arranged according to the sexual system, it is overloaded with useless synonyms, and there is no comparison, geographical or systematic, with extra-Italian plants, and it is thus alike inconvenient for the local and the general botanist. Even the best Floras of separate Italian states are not entirely free from similar defects. Gussone's excellent "Synopsis Flora Siculæ," in two octavo volumes, 1842 to 1844, is founded on the most careful researches, for which he even visited the herbaria of France and this country, and may be relied on for accuracy and acute discrimination of character; but unfortunately the sexual system is still adhered to, and the multiplication of species is carried very far. Tenore's works on the Neapolitan Flora are either a costly illustrated folio in five volumes, in which species were manufactured to please the King for the glory of the country, or an octavo sylloge, an enumeration with characters only of his own species, all distributed under the Linnæan classes. Sanguinetti is now carrying slowly through the press a Roman Flora for the use of students, in a large type in quarto, and still according to the sexual system. Allioni's folio, "Flora Pedemontana," very remarkable for the time of its appearance (1785), and many other local Floras of Northern Italy have now become antiquated. Moris' "Flora Sardoæ," comprising the whole of the late kingdom of Sardinia, continental and insular, is really a superior work, and is in almost every respect up to the requirements of the day, being, we believe, the first Italian Flora in which the natural system is adopted, but it is bulky and incomplete. Three quarto volumes, dated from 1837 to 1859 are occupied by Dicotyledons, and we fear there is little chance of our receiving the remainder from the hands of the now aged Professor. There are also excellent modern Floras of the Islands of Ischia by Gussone, of Capri by Moris and De Notaris; but these are very small spots in the whole Italian territory.

A general Italian Flora, after some such pattern as Willkomm and Lange's Prodromus, is, therefore, still a desideratum, and we wish we could have reported that Parlatore's "Flora Italiana" was likely to supply it. The ability and botanical knowledge of the distinguished Professor are undoubted. Italian botanical science is greatly indebted to him for having thrown off the trammels of routine which confined his countrymen to the sexual system and strictly Italian plants. It is owing chiefly to his exertions that the establishment of a general botanical Museum and Library at Florence