Abstract
THERE is no more difficult task than that of editing reissues of scientific works published some years since. The progress of science is so rapid, the number of new facts accumulated year by year so enormous, that the most satisfactory and exhaustive treatise on any subject written by a specialist in that subject, becomes to a certain extent obsolete or imperfect in ten years. And yet, where can our scientific men be found with leisure to write or edit new dictionaries of science every ten years? The re-editing of old dictionaries seems, therefore, the inevitable alternative, though one attended with many disadvantages, which disadvantages are greatly increased when the objectionable plan has been adopted, as in the present case, of stereotyping the plates of the original work. The new facts can then only be placed before the reader in the iorm of a supplement, which may often seem at variance with the work itself, while errors or imperfect descriptions cannot fail to be reproduced. Lindley and Moore's “Treasury of Botany” was so admirable a work in its day, containing such an enormous mass of information, that a new edition must necessarily be welcome, although botanical science has made such rapid strides since its first publication in 1866; and the welcome will be more hearty when it is found that the new matter has been entrusted to such competent authorities as Dr. Masters, Prof. Thiselton-Dyer, Mr. Britten of the British Museum, Mr. Jackson of the Kew Museum, and the surviving editor. The only fault we have to find with the supplement is that it occupies five times too little space; under 100 pages out of 1,350 is clearly entirely insufficient for even a brief account of the main additions to botanical knowledge made during the last eight years. Had the new contributors been allowed a larger space, the book would have been a far more satisfactory one. It is to be regretted that at a time when so much attention is being paid to vegetable histology, a description of the vegetable cell should be republished without comment, not only so inadequate, but so misleading in our present state of knowledge, as the following:—“Cavities in the interior of a plant; the cells of tissue are those which form the interior of the elementary vesicles;” or that no description whatever should be given of the structure or mode of formation of starch-grains. As a dictionary of botanical nomenclature and classification the work is most ample; and on this ground only the “Treasury of Botany” is one which no botanical student can afford to be without.
The Treasury of Botany: a Popular Dictionary of the Vegetable Kingdom, with which is incorporated a Glossary of Botanical Terms.
Edited by J. Lindley Thos. Moore; assisted by numerous contributors. New and revised edition, with Supplement. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1874.)
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B., A. The Treasury of Botany: a Popular Dictionary of the Vegetable Kingdom, with which is incorporated a Glossary of Botanical Terms . Nature 9, 300 (1874). https://doi.org/10.1038/009300a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/009300a0