109 
Reviews, 
Essentials of Vegetable Pharmacognosy.: A Treatise on Struc- 
tural Botany. Designed especially for Pharmaceutical and Medi- 
cal Students, Pharmacists and Physicians. By Henry H. Rusby, 
M. D. and Smith Ely Jelliffe, M. D. ; 
Pharmacognosy is that branch of pharmacology which treats 
of unprepared drugs. It is therefore comprehensive, including 
several sciences, specially botany and chemistry. The work be- 
fore us takes up vegetable pharmacognosy, in other words, it is 
a botanical treatise clearly and intelligently displaying the rela- 
tions of morphology and organography to the study of vegetable 
drugs. It consists of two parts: the first, by Prof. Rusby, on the 
gross structure of plants; the second, by Prof. Jelliffe, on their 
minute structure. Both parts have been carried out in a manner 
worthy of the high reputation of their authors. Prof. Rusby’s 
extended original studies as a systematic botanist, together with 
his experience as a teacher, have made him not only familiar with 
the needs of students, but thoroughly fitted to supply them. His 
work will be profitably consulted by all interested in botany. It 
is inspired by the truly scientific and natural method, following 
the laws of development and logically bringing out the relations 
and homology of parts, a philosophical process which leads the 
author, for instance, to define the flower as “a reduced branch 
modified for the production of seeds,” and to find in the leaf “all 
the elements which characterize primary stem structure.” It is 
hardly necessary to add that it embodies, so far as the limits per- 
‘mit, all the latest advanccs of science, as specially made clear 
under the headings of fertilization, pollination, dissemination of 
fruit, etc. It contains only 100 closely printed pages, but omits 
nothing of interest and may be truly regarded as a model of con- 
densation ; seldom can so much assimilable information be found 
in the same space. In spite of the direct and lucid style of the | 
author, such condensation might prove bewildering to the begin- 
ner were it not for the richness and excellence of illustration, an 
admirable feature of the work, so that there is hardly a definition 
without its appropriate cut. It should be mentioned that most of ee 
the illustrations have been taken from nature. : 
