308 NOTICES OF BOOKS AND MEMOIES. 



his astonishment will be great to read that the wood of Conifera; 

 has no medullary rays, and that the male catkin of the Yew 

 has but one anther ; the short description of the female cone of 

 Jun (perns is mcorrect in five or six i)oints. 



Such examples show how much the book needed a thorough 

 revision by a botanist of the critical kind; perhaps one could 

 scarcely expect the author to do it himself. It says much for the 

 skill displayed in its preparation that-, in spite of its many errors, 

 one must still regard it as the most comprehensive and compact, 

 and in some respects the best, book of its class. H. T. 



The Organic ConstituenU of Plants and Vegetable Substances, and their 

 Chemical Anah/sis. By Dr. Gr. C. Wittstein. Authorised 

 Translation from the German original, enlarged with nu- 

 merous Additions b}^ Bakon Feed. Von Mueller. Melbourne : 

 M'Carron, Bird & Co. 1878. Pp. 330. 



About twenty years ago Eochleder collected, in his ' Anleitung 

 zur Analyse von Pflanzen und Pflanzeutheilen,' the chief results 

 which had up to that time been arrived at during the investigation 

 of the organic constituents of plants, and placed before the student 

 a sketch of the history of this branch of science and an outline of 

 the methods which had been found of service for the extraction 

 and examination of the active principles which plants contain. 

 Ten years later, iu 1868, Dr. Wittstein, of Munich, published his 

 * Anleitung zur chemischen Analyse von Pflanzentheilen auf ihre 

 organischen Bestandtheile,' which formed a fitting supplement to 

 Rochleder's work. • It has now been translated by Baron von 

 Mueller at his own private cost, and, with the many additions he 

 has provided bringing the literature of the subject down to the 

 present date, it forms a handy volume which will be of value as a 

 work of reference both to the botanist and the chemist. 



Two-thirds of the volume is devoted to a detailed description, 

 in alphabetical order, of the proximate constituents of plants and 

 vegetable substances, their properties, their mode of preparation, 

 and qualitative examination. The old formulae, now rarely to be 

 met with in our text-books of chemistry, have been retained ; the 

 new formulaB are, however, given in the table of the molecular 

 weights of organic compoimds which follows next, so that they 

 can easily be ascerttiined by a cross reference. He then gives a 

 synopsis' of the plants which yield the proximate constituents 

 ah-eady referred to, as well as a list of the plants sj^stematically 

 arranged according to then' Orders :. here a cross reference would 

 have been useful. 



The second part of the work is devoted to a description of the 

 ai)paratus employed in analysis and the chemical reagents requked, 

 and a consideration of the various methods of using them for the 

 extraction of the active principle contained in the plant under 

 investigation. Some of the expressions he employs are not quite 

 in accordance with those in general use, such as " hypermanganate 

 of potash," " oxyd of lead,"' " white of lead," " sulphur et of hydro- 



