62 NOTICES OF BOOITS, 



that this Car ex, considered with much reason by Bos well Syme and 

 others to be a hybrid, has not been observed in Herts for very many 

 years; at all events we have heard of no record since 1846. 



liJoticCief of 23oaft^. 



Pharmacographia. A History of the Principal Drugs of vegetable 

 origin met with in Great Britain and British India. By 

 Feiedeich a. Fluckigee, Ph. Dr., &c., and Daniel Hanbitry, 

 P.R.S., &c. London: Macmillan and Co., 1874 (pp. 704). 



In these days of compilations and book-making on short notice, it 

 is a positive pleasure to take up a volume so full of novelty and so 

 original in treatment as ** Pharmacographia," and one, moreover, so 

 evidently the outcome of extensive and difficult researches extending 

 over very many years. Nor are these its only, nor perhaps its main 

 recommendation ; it is a full-grown book, not sent into the world half- 

 developed, but matured and complete (so far as its scope extends), 

 written tersely and well, because the writers are enabled to speak 

 with the authority which results from perfect familiarity with their 

 subject. A j^riori one would not expect a treatise on drugs to be 

 particularly readable to an ordinary person even of scientific tastes, 

 and one can well imagine a most tiresome book from incompetent 

 hands. But let anyone read the history, say of Cinnamon, of Pepper, or 

 of Camphor in the book before us, and he not only finds an eminently 

 well- written and interesting narrative, but gets an amount of in all 

 probability novel information, philological, historical, botanical and 

 geographical, in a few pages, which is astonishing. Perhaps what is 

 most striking is the fact that nearly all the information is obtained 

 first-hand ; the authors have systematically gone to original sources of 

 information, and the foot-notes of reference are to books and MSS. of 

 all periods and most languages. They afi'ord some indication of the 

 labour which must have been spent on this portion of the book, very 

 many of them referring to the rare and obscure writings of the early 

 Spanish explorers, the mediaeval Arabic physicians, and other neg- 

 lected portions of literature. 



It would, of course, be quite beyond the province of this Journal 

 to speak in detail of this admirable volume, the subject of which lies 

 for the most part beyond its scope. From the well-known botanical 

 abilities, however, of one of the authors — of whom, indeed, it is not 

 too much to say, that to him nearly all the important determinations 

 of drug-yielding plants made in recent years are due — a special im- 

 portance attaches to the botanical portion of the book, and to this 

 part it is necessary that this short notice be restricted. 



There are 228 drugs enumerated and treated of, and they are 



