BOOK-NOTES, IsEWS, ETC. 31 



iVIlyeres (Paris, 1914), Avhich the brothers Jalmndiez compiled, 

 illustrated, and printed in their house at Carqueiranne. — H. S. T. 



Dii. James Small has reprinted in pamphlet form from the 

 Pharmaceutical Journal (17 Bloomsbury Square, W.C., Is. net) 

 an interesting and very comprehensive essa}^ on The Ajyplication of 

 Botany to the Utilisation of Medicinal Plants. The aim of the 

 author "is in the first place to demonstrate the value of botany 

 to the pharmacist, and in the second place to interest the present 

 generation of students in the man}^ interesting problems ^vhich, 

 although they have a direct bearing on the exploitation of the 

 plant as a healer, are also purely botanical in the methods required for 

 their solution and in many of the results of such solution. In fact, 

 [the paper is] an attempt to revive the Theophrastian point of view 

 which considers the medicinal plant primarily as a flant and only 

 secondarily as medicinal, in contradistinction to the Dioscoridean 

 point of view, which considers the medicinal plant only as a drug, 

 very little notice being taken of the life and affinities of the druo-- 

 yielding organism. In order to make any considerable progress we 

 luust learn from the past, by a rational study of the history of 

 medicinal plants, what methods may be used, what results may be 

 expected, and what dangers may be avoided. A i-apid review of the 

 subject from pakTeolithic times to the beginning of last centurv will, 

 therefore, be put forward, not in an attempt to summarise the history 

 of such a period, but to elucidate and illustrate the chief lessons it 

 has to teach us." The type — that used in the Journal — is un- 

 pleasantly small, and one wonders whether it would not have paid to 

 have produced the essay in book-form in larger tj^pe, to which its 

 merits seem to entitle it. 



The Kew Bulletin (no. 9) contains an exhaustive paper by 

 Mr. Lacaita on the history and name of the " Jerusalem Artichoke '* 

 {TLelianthus tuberosus), in which the introduction of the plant into 

 Europe is traced; the tubers first reached England in 1617. The 

 section on the name is at least as interesting as that on the plant : 

 the former dates from 1622, when it appeared in the second edition 

 of Venner's Via recta. The popular explanation, originated by J. E. 

 Smith in 1807, that "Jerusalem" is a corruption of the Italian 

 girasole, is conclusively set aside : " there has never existed such an 

 Italian combination as the c/irasole articiocco assumed by Smith as 

 the origin of our Jerusalem artichoke," nor does Mr. Lacaita's 

 tentative suggestion seem conclusive. In the same number is an 

 equally important and exhaustive essay by Sir David Prain and 

 Mr. Burkill on " Dioscorea sativa," which contains much matter of 

 bibliographical as well as of botanical value. Biographies of the late 

 William Gilson Farlow, the eminent American mycologist (1814- 

 1919), and J. W. H. Trail (with bibliography) are included in the 

 number, which contains more than seventy pages and, happy in the 

 possession of a well-bestowed Government subsidy, is published at 

 fivepence ! 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on Nov. 20 last, Dr. G-. C. 

 Druce exhibited specimens of, and made remarks on, what were 

 announced as " Two New British Plants." Of one, Eri/thrcea scil- 

 loides Chaub., a full account was given in this Journal for 1918, 



