markable; there being no return whatever reported from the city of Boston, of either births, marriages, or deaths. This is the more singular, as a complete register of deaths has been kept by the superintendent of burial-grounds, and it is hardly credible that the clergymen and magistrates, before whom marriages have been celebrated, have exposed themselves to very considerable penalties, by a total neglect to make reports; and one might suppose that the school-committee could have employed a competent person to collect the facts relative to births, for the compensation allowed by law. Other large towns seem to have endeavoured to comply with the law. We have made inquiries, but without success, to ascertain the cause of this singular delinquency of Boston in a matter in which it is more interested than any other town in the State, and whose inhabitants and public officers are not wont to be behind others in any measure of public utility.

pre

It is to be hoped that Massachusetts will persevere, until it sents an example, which will soon be followed by other States, of a complete record of the statistics of the population. Such statistics, when accurately collected, on sufficient authority, and arranged in tables, in such manner that the general results are apparent at a glance, according to the recent practice in England, and the plan adopted by Mr. Secretary Palfrey, are full of interest and instruction to the legislator and the philanthropist, and of incalculable utility in their bearing and influence upon proceedings connected with the public welfare, and in the administration and management of private rights and interests. They are not merely matters of speculative curiosity, but form the actual basis of legislation, and of the proceedings of voluntary associations and individuals for the melioration of the condition of the people. In order to know what will promote the welfare of a people, and what will be prejudicial to them, it is quite material to know the facts relative to the population; and such facts can be collected only by the government. These statistics enter into affairs, and are essential in determining the rights of persons, in a thousand ways. The value of a widow's dower, for instance, or of any life estate, must frequently be decided upon by the judicial tribunals; and this cannot be done correctly in any community without a long continued registry of births and deaths. The value of such an interest has been erroneously estimated in Massachusetts for a long series of years, and, indeed, ever since any such estimate was first made, for the want of such a registry. For it is easy to show, that Professor Wigglesworth's tables of mortality, by which the value of such rights has been settled in Massachusetts, and more or less in other States, are not correct.

He himself stated that they were not correct. It is not now possible to construct an accurate table of longevity for any part of the United States from any series of well authenticated statistics. In computing rates of premium for insurance on lives, and the value of annuities, the same difficulty occurs as in estimating the value of life estates. The returns collected and digested in the secretary's reports already made in Massachusetts afford considerable materials for such computations; still, with these and all the other data to be found for the purpose, only an approximation can be made towards the construction of an accurate scale of the value of lives.

Some light is shed by these reports upon another subject of much interest; namely, the rate and causes of the increase of the population in this country. It appears from the recent statistics in England, that the average age of marriage of maidens is there 243; whereas, from these annual reports of the secretary, it is to be inferred, that in Massachusetts the average age of maidens at their marriage is about 23. The return of this fact of the age has caused more inconvenience and dissatisfaction than that of any other required by the law. The clergyman requested to attend a marriage is reluctant to put such an inquiry, and, if he does, he is liable sometimes to receive a short answer, quite aside from the purpose. This is not because the parties generally expect or wish to conceal their age; an attempt at such concealment is ordinarily both silly and ridiculous, since the fact is usually notorious to one's acquaintances. When there is any plain object for putting this inquiry in the course of business, not one person in a hundred will affect any reserve. But where the occasion for the inquiry is not obvious, the making it savors somewhat of impertinence. It is probable that the law has not hit upon the most convenient way of ascertaining this fact. Accordingly, representations were made at the last session of the legislature against this part of the law; and, as is very apt to be the result in such cases,· since it is much easier, and more within the reach of the unskilful, to destroy than to build up or amend, the proceedings preliminary to legislation on the subject resulted in a proposition to repeal the law, and sweep the whole subject of registration by the board. This proposition did not succeed, and it is to be hoped that it will never again be made. It is likely, however, to have the effect of encouraging municipal officers in their neglect. There is, therefore, the more occasion for publicspirited, liberal-minded persons to use their exertions to promote the execution of the law, and its amendment in any particulars in which it is found not to work well.

VOL. LXI. - No. 128.

22

4. The Botanical Text-Book, for Colleges, Schools, and Pri vate Students; comprising, Part I. An Introduction to Structural and Physiological Botany. Part II. The Principles of Systematic Botany; with an Account of the Chief Natural Families of the Vegetable Kingdom, and Notices of the Principal Useful Plants. Second Edition, illustrated with more than a Thousand Engravings on Wood. By ASA GRAY, M. D., Fisher Professor of Natural History in Harvard University. New York: Wiley & Putnam. 1845. 12mo. pp. 509.

THE first edition of this work, published less than three years ago, was favorably reviewed in our number for January, 1843. The justice of the hearty commendations then bestowed upon it, which have been echoed from the other side of the Atlantic, is confirmed by the call for a new edition. We ought rather to say, that a new treatise has been written to supply the place of the former one. This was rendered almost necessary, indeed; partly on account of the rapid advancement which physiological botany, no less than all the natural sciences, is continually mak. ing; and partly because Dr. Gray's experience as a teacher, since the first edition was published, has enabled him to discern, as only a teacher can do, the points which were defective, or which required more detailed explanation. He has thus had the advantage of making a practical trial of his own theories, and of the sufficiency of their exposition. The progressive improvement of the whole cousinhood of the sciences has been so marked of late, that it is dangerous now to presume upon an acquaintance with them, merely on the strength of an intimacy formed a few years ago. Stereotype text-books, however they may answer the purpose in other departments of knowledge, which vary only from century to century, are here quite out of the question.

We are glad to see, therefore, that the author of the Botanical Text-Book, on the occasion of a new edition being required, has made such a good use of the opportunity, and of his professional experience, and has recomposed, and almost entirely rewrit ten, the first, and, in the author's view, the most essential, part of the work, that upon structural and physiological botany, which has here been amplified to nearly twice its former extent. The author correctly remarks in his preface, that "this part of the volume, instead of having been rendered more abstruse by the enlargement, will rather be found to be more simple and generally intelligible than before." This is owing to the greater expansion he has given to the abstruse points, to the increased

number of illustrative wood-cuts, which in the new edition is fully doubled, and also to some changes in the style, which has been rendered rather more flowing and narrative, and less terse and axiomatic than before. No doubt, some further changes of the same sort would render it yet more adapted to the end in view; that is, if room can be found for the expansion, for the work has already extended into a bulky volume of above five hundred pages. This is a somewhat unusual fault to find with elementary works, which generally need concentration rather than dilation; but Dr. Gray sometimes expects rather too much of his readers, and appears to forget that a sentence, however clear, may be too compact; and, though it demonstrably embodies the whole idea, may fail to convey it at a glance to those who are not already somewhat familiar with the subject.

The "Preliminary Considerations" of the first edition, which were open to these objections, and must have been difficult for the student to master at the outset, are here omitted, and in their place we have a brief development of the mode in which the leading divisions of the science of botany may be supposed to arise, which strikes us as truly philosophical, and in some respects original. In our former review, we took some exceptions to our author's mode of stating the doctrine of vegetable metamorphosis, as it is, we still think, somewhat inaptly termed. It seemed to savor too much of Wolff's notion, that the vegetable degenerated into the flower. The more detailed statements of the

present edition are no longer liable to these strictures. The general laws of vegetation are traced from the stem and foliage into the flower in the following manner.

"The flower may next be viewed under a more theoretical aspect. In the preceding chapter we have recognized the close analogy of flower-buds to leaf-buds, and consequently of flowers to branches, and of the leaves of the flower to ordinary leaves. The plant continues for a considerable time to produce buds which develope into branches. At length it produces buds which expand into blossoms. Is there an entirely new system introduced when flowers appear ? Are the blossoms formed upon such a different plan, that the general laws of vegetation, which have sufficed for the interpretation of all the phenomena up to the inflorescence, are to afford no further clew? Or, on the contrary, now that peculiar results are to be attained, are the simple and plastic organs of vegetation the stem and leaves-developed in new and modified forms for the accomplishment of these new ends? The latter, doubtless, is the correct view. The plant does not produce essentially new kinds of organs to fulfil the new conditions, but adopts and adapts the old. New laws of development are now introduced; but these operate subordinately to the primary laws of vegetation, instead of subverting them.

"In vegetation, new organs are not created for every or any con

tingency; but the root, stem, and leaves are modified, as circumstances require, to subserve every needful purpose. Thus, the same organ which constitutes the stem of an herb, or the trunk of a tree, we recognize in the trailing vine, or twiner, spirally climbing other stems, in the straw of Wheat and other Grasses, in the coluninar trunk of the Palm, in the flattened and jointed Opuntia, or Prickly-pear, and in the rounded, lump-like body of the Melon-Cactus. So, also, the branches harden into spines in the Thorn, or, by an opposite change, become flexible and attenuated tendrils in the Vine, and runners in the Strawberry; or, when developed under ground, they assume the aspect of creeping roots, and sometimes form thickened rootstocks, as in the Calamus, or tubers, as in the Potato. But the type is easily seen through these disguises. They are all mere modifications of the stem. The leaves, as we have already seen, appear under a still greater variety of forms, some of them as widely different from the common type of foliage as can be imagined; such, for example, as the thickened and obese leaves of the Mesembryanthemums; the intense scarlet or crimson floral leaves of the Euchroma, or Painted-Cup, the Poinsettia of our conservatories, and several Mexican Sages; the tendrils of the Pea tribe; the Pitchers of the Sarracenia, &c., and those of the Nepenthes, which are leaf, tendril, and pitcher combined. The leaves also appear under very different aspects in the same individual plant, according to the purposes they are intended to subserve. The first pair of leaves, or cotyledons, as in the Bean and Almond, gorged with nutritive matter for the supply of the earliest wants of the embryo-plant, seem to be peculiar organs. But when they have discharged this special office in germination, by yielding to the young plant their store of nourishment with which they are laden, they throw off their disguise, and assume the color and appearance of ordinary foliage. As the stem elongates, the successive leaves vary in form or size, according to the varying vigor of vegetation. In our trees, we trace the last leaves of the season into bud-scales; and in the returning spring, we often observe the innermost scales of the expanding leaf-buds to resume, the first perhaps imperfectly, but the ensuing ones successfully, the appearance and the ordinary office of leaves.

"Analogy would therefore suggest, that in the final act of vegetable development, in flowering, the leaves, no longer developing as mere foliage, are now wrought into new forms, to subserve peculiar purposes. In the chapter on Inflorescence, we have already shown, that the arrangement and situation of flowers upon a stem conform to this idea. In this respect, flowers are absolutely like branches. The aspect of the floral envelopes favors the same view. We discern the typical element, the leaf, in the calyx; and again, more delicate and refined, in the petals. In numberless instauces, we observe a regular transition from ordinary leaves into sepals, and from sepals into petals. And, while the petals are occasionally green and herbaceous, the undoubted foliage sometimes assumes a delicate texture and the brightest hues. Familiar cases of the latter kind have just been alluded to."—pp. 208-211.

Then follows the ordinary class of illustrations with some novel examples; and our author continues: