Botanical Tables for the Use of Students

Abstract

ANY attempt to compress the facts of nature within the arbitrary limits of a defined tabular statement must necessarily be misleading from a scientific, that is, from a philogenetic, point of view. Classificatory tables have ievertheless their use to the student, in aiding his memory by bringing a large number of facts within a small compass. Dr. Aveling is careful to disavow any independent value for his tables, and frankly states that they will not only be useless, but positively injurious, if allowed in any way to be a substitute for practical field-work. With hese limitations the tables may be recommended as probably as good, or nearly so, as any that could be drawn up. They have been compiled carefully, and on the whole successfully Defects can no doubt be pointed out. Thus he description of certain inflorescences as “centripetal arranged centrifugally” requires a foot-note to explain its meaning; the class Gymnospermœ is given on one page as of superior value to Incompletœ, on another as included within it; and it is difficult to understand how the terms “loculicidal” and “septicidal” can be applied with propriety to a mono-carpellary capsule like that of the primrose. The statement that “the tables on classification have been compiled from Dr. Hooker's ‘Student's Flora of the British islands’” is rather misleading, when we find, on p. 14, the Gamopetalous orders with inferior ovary included in “Calyciflbræ.” But defects of this sort are incidental to any attempt of the kind, Dr. Aveling may be congratulated on the success of his effort, if it be not of a very high order.

Botanical Tables for the Use of Students.

Compiled by Edward B. Aveling. Second Edition. (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co.).