The Reverend J. S. Hearseow's Principles of Descriptive and Physiological
Botany, (LARDNER'S Cabinet Cyclopsedia, No. 75,) is a well-arranged, learned, and scientific treatise, alike useful to the superficial reader or the botanical student. By perusing the leading remarks of each section, the former will gain a general idea of the character and nature of the substances of which plants are foamed; of the structure of their organs of nutrition and re- production ; and the different groups into which the vegetable kingdom is arranged. He will also peruse some interesting re- marks on the properties and stimulants of life, as well as on fossil botany, and the geographical distribution of vegetation ; and acquire some knowledge of the functions performed by those organs of nutrition and reprodection of whose qualities as a ma- chine he has previously been told. The student of course will go deeper, and by a patient perusal of the volume master the details which the idler has neglected, and thus acquire a thorough knowledge of the elementary substances, formation, and action of plants. The style of the author, though formal, is clear. The text is illustrated by a profusion of wood-cuts, and there is an index of a very useful description.
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