in those plodding minds which revel in the labour of working out minutiae of detail, and, to find their way, are satisfied with a sexual, alphabetical, or any other artificial index, as well as in those speculating heads who in developing the conceptions of their brain will not be bound by any system. The advantages of the natural method were too little felt by either class of botanists to obtain for it partisans sufficiently zealous to overcome the force of habit, kept up as it was by the number of works issued from the German press. Roemer and Schultes' above-mentioned Systema continued from 1817 to 1820, through six volumes, Monandria to Pentandria-a long succession of disconnected genera, showing more than any other work the confusion arising from the use of such a so-called class as Pentandria, a confusion still further increased by the Mantissas, and first and second Additamenta to the Mantissas, the only portions of the work which appeared during the nine succeeding years. In 1829 and 1830, Hexandria was published in two volumes, after which the progress of the Prodromus had even in Germany finally driven it out of the market, never we hope to be revived. In the meantime various publishers tried to avail themselves of the cheapness of compiling labour as well as of printing to comply with the general demand for a complete and compact enumeration of all known plants. Steudel's alphabetical Nomenclator, of which the first edition appeared in 1821, and the second in 1810-1, is really an excellent and most useful index, in the hands of every general working systematic botanist, and now greatly in need of a third edition. Sprengel's Species Plantarum, or so-called sixteenth edition of Linnæus' Systema Vegetabilium, with short diagnoses, was completed in four years from 1825 to 1828, and, as a book of reference to all plants then known, was well received, until a more general use exposed its defects. Had it been merely a conscientious compilation, the help of the alphabetical index would have compensated for the inconveniences of the sexual system, but it was so carelessly worked out, the generic changes and the bringing together or disjunction of species so frequently and so hastily made from books and not from specimens, that after having been grossly misled by it on several occasions, we laid it aside in disgust. We regarded it indeed as the worst systematic enumeration which it was possible to palm upon the public, until the appearance of D. N. P. Dietrich's Synopsis Plantarum, "after the model of Persoon," in five volumes, 1839 to 1852. Caught by the promising advertisements, we ordered it at once, but on opening the first volumes, its

utter worthlessness was immediately patent. We were glad enough to countermand the remainder, and sell for waste paper the two volumes we had received, and we find no traces of its being ever used in the few libraries where we have seen it. This was the lowest degradation to which the once celebrated Linnean system could descend, and was we hope its final extinction, a termination that can only be compared to that of the famous German constitution and Frankfort Parliament of 1848-9, in a pot-house at Stuttgardt.

The natural method had by this time firmly established itself with the Germans, although frequently with the endeavour to impress upon it forms of their own. Endlicher's "Genera Plantarum," completed in five years, 1836 to 1840, a work of great labour and ably executed, and still the most complete of the kind we possess, struck out a linear series of Orders quite independent of both Jussieu and De Candolle, and in the various more general sketches of the system which German botanists have produced, still greater divergences have been proposed. In works on separate collections, however, as well as in local Floras, the Prodromus has been more implicitly followed, and especially in Koch's model "Synopsis Flora Germanica et Helvetica," of which the first edition appeared in 1837, which has for many years been the most useful practical work on continental botany that we possess, and is perhaps that which has most contributed finally to expel the Linnean classes from the German mind.

It remains for us to say a few words on Kunth's Enumeratio, which, as above mentioned, was destined to replace the Prodromus in the great class of Monocotyledons. The discredit into which Sprengel's Species had fallen, induced the great publishing house of Cotta to look out for a more able hand to prepare a work to replace it, and accordingly arrangements for the purpose were concluded with Kunth then established at Berlin. But when the printing was to be commenced, it turned out that the publisher had understood that the Linnean system was to be strictly followed, which the author of Humboldt's "Nova Genera et Species" could not of course consent to, and the work remained in abeyance till old Cotta died, in or about 1832. His successors, seeing in their books a large advance made to Kunth and nothing to show for it, insisted on the immediate production of a first volume or a return of the money, waiving all conditions as to system, which they left to the author's responsibility. Accordingly the Gramines were published in 1833. This volume, although free

N.H.R.-1864.

2 N

from the blunders of a Sprengel, and although the author's own accurate contributions were distinguishable from what he copied, bore on the whole too evidently the signs of its hasty preparation to be of that service which might have been expected, and the second part, published in 1835, with detailed descriptions of specimens of some of the plants contained in the first was little better than a take-in. The work improved however in the subsequent volumes, and is valuable for its accuracy, notwithstanding that the descriptions are still more of specimens than of species, and that we miss in it that clear method and diagnoses, both generic and specific, which characterise the best volumes of the Prodromus. The work was finally stopped by the death of the author, after the completion of the fifth volume published in 1850.

In Sweden, Linnæus' own country, national pride in having produced so great a man might in some measure have been an excusable ground for a longer adherence to his system, and accordingly we find it still retained in Wikström's "Stockholm Flora" in 1840, and in Hartmann's General Synopsis of Swedish Plants in 1843, but Fries' more general views induced him in 1846 to adopt a natural arrangement for his "Summa Vegetabilium Scandinavia," which, under his great authority, has thus, we believe, become established even in Linnæus' own University of Upsala. Russia owes many of her scientific professors to her German provinces, and receives her scientific works more from Germany than from any other country, and the Linnean system maintained its ground later there than in Western Europe. It was still followed by Ledebour in his first great work, the "Flora Altaica,” published in the years 1829 to 1833, but finally discarded and the order of the Prodromus adopted by the same enlightened botanist in his general Flora of the Empire, completed in the years from 1842 to 1853, and the natural system is now universally adopted in all the partial works illustrating different portions of the Flora of that vast territory. In the south of Europe, we reviewed in our last number the works which have established the same system in Spain and modern Italy, and we believe that at this moment the only country on the face of the world sufficiently in arrear to sanction the publication of an elaborate Flora on the Linnean system is antiquated anti-progressive Rome.

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LXV.-HOOKER'S NEW ZEALAND FLORA.

HANDBOOK OF THE NEW ZEALAND FLORA. Part I. INCLUDING THE FLOWERING PLANTS AND FERNS. By J. D. Hooker, M.D., F.R.S., &c. Reeve and Co.

WE sincerely congratulate our New Zealand readers-and we trust that we have more than a few of them-on the publication of their Flora in an accessible and inexpensive form. Especially do we congratulate them that its preparation has fallen to Dr. Hooker, whose delight, ever since his memorable voyage as Naturalist to Sir J. Ross' Antarctic Expedition, has been in the intensely interesting problems of plant-distribution offered by the Islands of the Southern Hemisphere, and above all by the New Zealand Flora; - upon questions linked with which he has expended an infinity of loving labour and profound thought. His essay upon the Flora of New Zealand appeared eleven years ago, and it is no exaggeration to say that its appearance marked an epoch in botanical literature. This essay, our readers are aware, served as the Introduction to the author's larger Flora of New Zealand, included in the series upon the Botany of the countries visited by the Antarctic Expedition-an illustrated 4to. series, entitled "Botany of the Antarctic Voyage." Two of the volumes, illustrated by 130 admirable plates, were devoted to the New Zealand Flora. The cost of this magnificent work places it beyond the reach of most students and much limits its practical usefulness, and it was a wise decision of the Colonial Government when they acquiesced in the proposal of Sir W. J. Hooker that the Flora of their Islands should be again worked up and published in octavo, uniform with the series of Colonial Floras, noticed in previous volumes of this Review, which we owe to the indefatigable exertions of that eminent Botanist. During the eleven years which have elapsed since the publication of the 4to. Flora of New Zealand, the Colonists and visitors have not been idle. The total number of species of flowering plants Dr. Hooker reckoned at 730 in 1853, now they number 935, an approximation to the estimate which he made in his earlier work of the probable extent of the Phanerogamic Flora. With this increase of material we have a wider basis than before for those comparisons which help us to a correct appreciation of the general relations and peculiarities of the New Zealand Flora. These we can but glance at, for Dr. Hooker in his preface states his intention to enter upon these considerations in an independent essay

at an early day, and he alone can invest the details with their true importance and secure from them generalizations of value.

In the book now before us, Dr. Hooker has closely followed the plan laid down by his venerable father, described in our volume for 1861 (page 255)—the plan followed in the Floras of Hong Kong and Australia prepared by Mr. Bentham for the Colonial series. This New Zealand Flora is styled a 'Handbook.' The word does not appear upon the title-page of the other Floras, so the author explains that it was adopted in conformity with the wishes of the Colonists themselves, who have manifested an eager interest in the progress of the work, besides passing in their legislature, on the requisition of Dr. Knight, the Auditor-General of the Colony, and other gentlemen interested in science, a sum of money for the author's remuneration.

The ordinal and generic characters in Dr. Hooker's Flora commence with a description of the habit, foliage, and prima facie characters of the plants, and not, as in the rest of the series, and as is usual in such works, with the minute reproductive, or "essential” organs. This plan has advantages, especially in a Flora in which the larger groups-Orders and Genera-are numerous in proportion to the species, and in which a large number of them include plants with obscure or inconspicuous floral organs. It will save much trouble to beginners who would otherwise probably wade through several lines of microscopic detail, spoil their specimen, and perhaps lose their patience, before finding some decisive character, convincing them they are right or wrong as chance might have it. Take any genus at any page:-Brachyglottis, for example, a genus of Compositæ. Beginners soon get to recognize Composites, but the genera of that enormous and most natural family-like the genera of other wellmarked families are often very artificial and difficult to determine. The first line of the description of this genus runs thus-" A tree. Leaves very large, tomentose below, as are the branches." The student has a scrap of some herbaceous plant in his hand and so passes on at the second word. On the usual plan the scales of the involucre, the form of the stigmas, the pappus, &c. would be first to examine, and there might be long fair sailing before the fatal wreck upon the tails of the anthers, or chaff of the receptacle, as the case might be. Great pains has been taken in the preparation of the Synopsis and Keys to the Orders and anomalous genera. Dr. Hooker says, "So many New Zealand plants are variable, have minute or unisexual flowers, or are otherwise difficult of determination, that by