82 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



vertebrates what Woodward and Morris did for 

 invertebrates. The amount of work it includes is 

 enormous. There is not a fossil vertebrate left 

 unnoticed that we have found ; whilst the biblio- 

 graphical references to all are full and accurate. It is 

 a monument of patient scientific industry. 



Index of British Plants, according to the London 

 Catalogue, by Robert Turnbull (London : George 

 Bell & Co.). This prettily bound brochure is the 

 eighth edition of one of the most useful books a 

 botanist could procure. It includes the synonyms 

 used by the principal authors, an alphabetical list of 

 English names, and full references to the illustrations 

 of Syme's " English Botany," and Bentham's 

 " British Flora." 



Notes on the Pinks of Western Europe, by F. N. 

 Williams (London : West, Newman & Co., Hatton 

 Garden). Mr. Williams is well known as a highly 

 competent authority on the subject which forms this 

 handy and compact little monograph. It will be 

 found exceedingly useful to students of this beautiful 

 group of plants. 



We have also received The Medical Annual for 

 1890 (Bristol : John Wright & Co.), which has grown 

 in bulk and usefulness every year since it was started 

 eight years ago, and has attained its highest develop- 

 ment in the present well-got-up volume. It is now 

 a capital book of reference for all medical practition- 

 ers, and is contributed to by the leading men of the 

 day in their particular profession. Also The Educa- 

 tional Annual, compiled by Edward Johnson (London: 

 Geo. Philip & Son), a handy reference to all our 

 Public Schools and Colleges, and a Review of the 

 position and progress of Elementary, Intermediate, 

 and University Education. Everything that can by 

 any possibility be associated with education in any 

 form has been usefully and compactly brought toge- 

 ther in this volume. 



Potential and Its Application to the Explanation of 

 Electrical Phenomena, by Dr. Tumliez, translated by 

 Dr. D. Robertson (London : Rivingtons). This is a 

 clear and well-done translation of a little book that 

 cannot but prove very useful to all students of physics, 

 whilst to students of electricity pure and simple it 

 will be of the highest value. 



Science and Scientists, by the Rev. John Gerard, S.J. 

 (London : 18 West Square, S.E.). This is a small 

 but well-bound collection of the tracts we have already 

 noticed. Mr. Gerard knows his subject, and is no 

 mean antagonist. This little book exhibits un- 

 doubted evidence of wide reading, although we 

 could have wished it had led to broader conclusions ; 

 it is a highly readable little volume. 



North American Birds, by H. Nehrling (London : 

 William Wesley & Son). Parts one and two, price 

 five shillings each. This work will be one of high 

 value to American ornithologists, and one that all 

 European ornithologists also would do well to take 

 in. It is to be completed in twelve parts, and will be 



illustrated by thirty-six highly coloured plates. 

 Judging by those in the present number sent us, 

 these will be highly artistic. That forming the 

 frontispiece is admirable. It is the picture of the 

 male and female of Anna's humming bird {Trochilus 

 Anna) with the pretty nest and eggs on a branch of 

 some favourite tree. Some of the plates figure six 

 different species. All are well drawn and coloured. 



We have received numbers one and three (number 

 two has not been sent) of a Handbook of Scientific and 

 Literary Bible Difficulties, edited by the Rev. .Robert 

 Tuck (London : Eliot Stock). It is an admirable 

 work for young Biblical students and Sunday school 

 teachers, dealing ably with solutions of perplexing 

 things in the Bible. 



ANIMALS AND MEDICINE. 

 By Hulwidgeon. 



"The proper and chief end of true natural philosophy is to 

 command and sway over natural beings, as bodies, medicines, 

 mechanical works." — Bacon. 



IF asked to decide which of the old "natural 

 kingdoms " had been most subsidised by the 

 apothecary, one would probably answer either the 

 vegetable or the mineral ; and yet, when one comes 

 to examine the history of medicine, he is not so sure 

 that tlie Animalia has not been called into contribu- 

 tion in excess of them both. Further, it seems to me, 

 after a long survey of the records of ancient physic in 

 England, that, great as has been the immolation of 

 living creatures at the altars of our appetites, defence, 

 and sport, the sacrifice at the shrine of medicine, at 

 least in the past, has equalled any. The butcher 

 (using the term in the general sense of one who pro- 

 vides us with animal food) has been satisfied with 

 slaying those creatures whose flesh would afford us 

 nutriment ; the apothecary, not content with such^ 

 has carried its depredations through every known 

 order of the animal kingdom ; the past and the 

 present, marine and terrestrial, living and dead, 

 virulent and innocuous, mean and gigantic, he has 

 dragged them all into his laboratory, and, with stills 

 and retorts, crucibles and alembics, has reduced them 

 all to the common dead level of his vehicles of 

 pharmacy. 



An inquiry into the full extent of the debt the art oi 

 medicine owes to the science of zoology would be a 

 work of such magnitude, that I shall confine my 

 remarks to one era only in their joint history, with a 

 little licence, to the eighteenth century. For the 

 selection of this period I have several sufficient 

 reasons. As I am not a medical man, I should not 

 wish to be responsible for the publication of recipes 

 that might be practically tested, nor of views that 

 might give rise to controversy ; I shall make my 

 discourse, therefore, entirely retrospective. The era 

 with which I shall deal was probably that in which 

 the art of medicine took its greatest progressive stride. 



