nor can we say that we think it what it ought to have been; still it is a step, and an important one, in the right direction-that of popularizing one of the most pleasing branches of Natural History. We are especially thankful to Schleiden for the following protest against certain insane nothings which have already been exposed in these pages. He says:

"True to my own convictions, I have kept free from all the pratings of the physio-philosophers of the Schelling school, and I am firmly persuaded that science has no need of these fopperies to make it appear interesting to the uninitiated. Humboldt in his 'Views of Nature,' Dove in his masterly 'Lectures on the Climate of Berlin,' have proved that science may really appear lovely and captivating, without adorning herself with the false tinsel of those conscious or unconscious falsehoods, which would substitute poetry for thought, imagination for knowledge, or dreams for truths. I have endeavoured to adorn these essays with as many graces as my imperfect æsthetic culture enabled me to impart, but that it has not been my intention to enter the lists with those masters of language, need scarcely be mentioned. I believe, however, that if men of science would more often seek to introduce truth into society, in fair attire, the path of that intolerable, mystical and pretentious, empty chattering, would be more effectually arrested than by any rational argumentation against it."—p. 2.

From a casual glance at its contents, Schleiden's book would at first sight appear, like the Irishman's letter, to treat "de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis," many of the said things seeming to bear about as much relation to Botany as to the French Revolution. For example, we have one lecture upon 'The Eye and the Microscope,' another About the Weather,' and two in reply to the question 'What does Man live upon?' This diversity of subjects, however, upon further acquaintance with his pages, is seen to be only a part of the author's plan, and, in connexion with the more purely botanical lectures, it is skilfully rendered subservient to the aim declared in the following extract :—

"My chief aim was, in fact, the satisfaction of what may be called a class-vanity. A large proportion of the uninitiated, even among the educated classes, are still in the habit of regarding the botanist as a dealer in barbarous Latin names, a man who plucks flowers, names them, dries and wraps them up in paper, and whose whole wisdom is expended in the determination and classification of this ingeniously collected hay. This portrait of the botanist was, alas! once true, but it pains me to observe, that now, when it bears resemblance to so

few, it is still held fast to by very many persons; and I have sought, therefore, in the present discourses, to bring within the sphere of general comprehension the more important problems of the real science of Botany, to point out how closely it is connected with almost all the most abstruse branches of philosophy and natural science, and to show how almost every fact, or larger group of facts, tends, as well in Botany as in every other branch of human activity, to suggest the most earnest and weighty questions, and to carry mankind forward beyond the possessions of sense, to the anticipations of the spirit.”— p. 1.

To this end, instead of treating plants as so many independent beings, isolated from all other natural objects, the author traces their intimate connexion with the rest of organic and inorganic creationwith the soil to which they are attached, the air which surrounds them, the water in which, as a convenient vehicle for absorption, the various matters necessary for their nutriment are contained, and even with the animal world, which derives from the vegetable kingdom so large a portion of its sustenance. He says:

"The vegetable world, if it be but looked upon as something more than the materials for a herbarium, offers so many points of contact to the human race, that those who devote themselves to its study, instead of having to complain of want of material, become oppressed with the multitude of interesting questions and problems which crowd upon them. The different subjects of consideration may be conveniently arranged under four aspects; 1stly, the condition of the plant itself as a question of scientific inquiry; 2ndly, the relations of the individual plants to each other; 3rdly, the relations of plants as organisms to the organism of the whole earth; and 4thly, the relation of the human race to the vegetable world. But since each of these four relations is fulfilled by the plant at one and the same time, it is infinitely difficult, if not impossible, to keep each aspect clear and unmixed; and when we enter upon one of these relations with the desire to subject it to closer investigation, we are always involuntarily constrained, sooner or later, to direct our attention to the rest, and to draw them within the circle of our researches. Though we establish upon these questions, according to their order, the following branches of study: Theoretical, or Pure Botany; Systematic Botany; Geographical and Applied Botany; yet not one of these can be treated from its own principal point of view alone, if it would lay claim to a scientific or profound character; still more difficult is it, however, to keep strictly within the boundaries of these four divisions when the object in view 2 I

VOL. III.

is not dry scientific teaching, but a lively demonstration of the more important points. In the following essays, therefore, the division into these four branches can only be adopted to a limited extent, and a freer treatment becomes necessary from the abundance of material which continually allures us to turn aside from our path, to gather here and there a bright or fragrant flower; or the companionship in which we wander through the land of science, induces us oftentimes to leave the straight but dusty and fatiguing high road, now to pursue our course through lanes which wind among pleasant meadows, now to explore a shady forest path."-p. 3.

Plants being built up of exceedingly minute cells or vesicles, of various forms and as varied contents, it is evident that a thorough examination of their internal structure should precede all other considerations. It is to a careful investigation of the minute organized constituents of plants that we owe the immense advances in Botany as a science, which have so completely distanced the labours of its early cultivators, whose performances were the more valuable in proportion as they employed in their researches that instrument to the improvements in the construction and mode of using which modern naturalists owe much of their pre-eminence. Thus we see that a preliminary chapter on the microscope, in connexion with the eye as the organ of vision, is perfectly relevant to the more immediate subject of the succeeding lectures. Of sight, the author well observes, that "it is the sense which originally introduces and unceasingly expands our whole knowledge of the corporeal world, and we may, therefore, with great propriety, call it the Sense of the Naturalist;" for, in the words of Seneca, appropriately used as the motto to this lecture,

"Oculus ad vitam nihil facit, ad vitam beatam nihil magis."

The second lecture relates to "The Internal Structure of Plants." And here, contrasting the comparatively trifling results of the most boasted labours of man, effected with so much toil and such extensive preparation of material and machinery-contrasting these with the stupendous and infinitely varied works of Nature, produced by the simplest causes and resulting from numerous combinations of the simplest means; the author remarks that " we need not ascend to the stars to recognize how little Nature requires to the unfolding of wonders:" and continues,

"Let us tarry a moment with the vegetable world. From the slender palm, waving its elegant crown in the refreshing breezes, high

aloft over the hot vapours of the Brazilian forests, to the delicate moss, barely an inch in length, which clothes our dainp grottoes with its phosphorescent verdure; from the splendid flower of Victoria regina, with its rosy leaves cradled in the silent floods of the lakes of Guiana, to the inconspicuous yellow blossom of the duck-weed on our own ponds; - what a wonderful play of fashioning, what wealth of forms!

"From the six-thousand-years-old Baobab, on the shores of Senegal, the seeds of which perhaps vegetated before the foot of man trod the earth, to the fungus, to which the fertilizing warmth of a summer night gave an existence which the morning closed — what differences of duration ! From the firm wood of the New Holland oak, from which the wild aboriginal carves his war-club, to the green slime upon our tombs, what multiformity, what gradations of texture, composition and consistence! Can one really believe it possible to find order in this embarrassing wealth, regularity in this seemingly disorderly dance of forms, a single type in these thousandfold varieties of habit? Till within a few years of the present time, indeed, the possibility was not yet conceived, for as I have before remarked, we may never expect to be enabled to spy into the mysteries of Nature until we are guided by our researches to very simple relations. Thus could we never attain to scientific results respecting the plant till we had found the simple element, the regular basis of all the various forms, and investigated and defined its vital peculiarities. By the help of the improved microscopes we have at last advanced far enough to find the point of departure of the general theory of the plant.

"The basis of the structure of all the so very dissimilar vegetables is a little closed vesicle, composed of a membrane usually transparent and colourless as water; this botanists call the cell,' or 'vegetable cell.' A review of the life of the cell must necessarily precede the endeavour to comprehend the whole plant, nay, it is as yet, properly speaking, almost the only really scientific part of Botany."-p. 42.

The author then, with the aid of coloured figures, enters upon a more minute history of the cell, as the foundation of all the tissues which go to make up the infinitely varied forms of plants; describing its appearance, contents, and mode of reproduction - each cell having the property of forming within itself a number of other cells, each of which is also endowed with the same property-and showing in what manner the vascular and woody tissues all proceed from the simple cells which are the primitive form of vegetable structure.

"We may regard the cell as à little independent organism, living for itself alone. It imbibes fluid nutriment from the surrounding parts, out of which, by chemical processes which are constantly in action in the interior of the cell, it forms new substances which are partly applied to the nutrition and growth of its walls, partly laid up in store for future requirements; partly again expelled as useless and to make room for the entrance of new matters. In this constant play of absorption and excretion, of chemical formation, transformation and decomposition of substances, especially consists the life of the cell, and, since the plant is nothing but a sum of many cells united into a definite shape, also the life of the whole plant.

"These cells in the course of their development become crowded closely together, and thus form the whole mass of the plant, the cellular tissue, which, however, may be divided into three principal classes of tissue, according to the different forms of the cells, and more especially according to their importance to the life of the plant." -p. 45.

One of the most curious things connected with the cell-structure of plants is the power possessed by those minute bodies, which all owe their origin to the same constituents, of forming the most varied substances in their interior, which substances may be primarily divided into such as are soluble in water and such as are insoluble. To the former class belong albumen, gum, sugar, and the acids; and to the latter the fatty and aromatic oils. The most remarkable of these substances is starch, whether regarded as playing a most important part in the nutrition of the animal kingdom, for which purpose it is stored up in great quantity in various parts of the plant, but more especially in the roots, tubers, seeds, fruits, and more rarely the pith; or as affording the only known mark of distinction between the chemical composition of the elementary tissues of plants and those of animals, since it occurs in the former in addition to the oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen common to the two kingdoms. In the lecture upon "The Propagation of Plants," the author, after referring to the almost infinite forms of animal life, all which, directly or indirectly, derive their sustenance from the vegetable world, proceeds to develop his own views of the means provided for the reproduction and multiplication of organisms upon which depend the very existence of so large a proportion of the inhabitants of our globe: and says

"That this may not be effected by a simple, well defined form of multiplication, as in the higher animals, is in itself evident, and be