The Classification of Flowering Plants

Abstract

THE practice which is gaining ground, whereby, to the exclusion of the general text-book, the specialist produces a book in which he takes up merely his own branch of a scientific subject, is satisfactory both from the point of view of the author and the reader. The author is well qualified to express his opinions, and the reader cannot fail to learn much from the critical exposition which he is tolerably sure to obtain. The book under notice is significant not only because it is written by one of our leading systematists, but also inasmuch as it is one of the first taxonomic treatises—another is Willis's “Manual of Flowering Plants and Ferns”—which follows Engler's system of classification. Bentham and Hooker's classification is followed in most British herbaria and collections, but there is much to be said in favour of training students in the system which, originally propounded by Eichler, has been modified by Dr. Engler, one of the principal reasons being that the arrangement of orders, although not developmental, at any rate provides a sequence which is distinctly helpful.