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•306 NEW PUBLICATIONS.<br />

from one another being indicated by means of italics, and the descrip-<br />

tive portion of the work being followed by an analytical key, con-<br />

structed upon the same plan as those given in Boreau's ' Flore du<br />

Centre.'<br />

The point suggested by the works upon which Ave feel most inclined<br />

to remark, is the question of what is the proper rank in the scale of<br />

nature, and what the relationship to each other of the individualities<br />

characterized in them. Since Weihe and Nees von Esenbeek pub-<br />

lished the ' Rubi Germauici,' the authors of floras and monographs for<br />

tracts of country in Central and Western Europe fall easily into<br />

three sets, in the plan they have followed in dealing with Brambles.<br />

First come those who, like Koch and Bcntham, treat Rubus fruticoHus<br />

as a single undivided species. The second and most rmmerous class<br />

follow Weihe and Nees in admitting and characterizing a comparatively<br />

limited number of so-called species. To this second class belong<br />

Arrheuius and Fries in Scandinavia, Dumortier in Belgium, Wimmer<br />

and Von Garcke in Germany, Godron in France, and Mercier in<br />

Switzerland ; and in Britain Professor Babington having made his<br />

debut as a fair average representative of this class, has in no way<br />

changed his position through the course of his successive writiags, his<br />

present work, as regards the general plan of species-limitation, being<br />

quite in accordance with the Synopsis of 1846. And we have a third<br />

class of authors to which belong P. J. Miiller and Wirtgen (as tested<br />

by his fasciculus) in Germany, and which, by his present work, M.<br />

Genevier represents for France, who acknowledge and define a very<br />

much larger number of what they also call " species."<br />

The following passage will show clearly in what light M. Genevier,<br />

as representing the third class, regards the species which he has esta-<br />

blished and characterized.<br />

" In the introduction to^his ' Diagnoses ' of new and misunderstood<br />

species," M. Jordan says, " We have not in our researches quitted for<br />

a single instant the domain of positive reality. It is not theories, but<br />

material facts that wc have to furnish ; it is not a certain manner of<br />

viewing things, or a particular opinion that we are going to express,<br />

but facts well and duly proved by the ordinary process of experience<br />

that we proceed without fear to submit to tiie examination of all<br />

friends of science. We have simply to unfold that which we have<br />

seen, experimentalized upon, proved, that which even those who are

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