NOTICES OF BOOKS. 189 



|5oticc^ of 23o0fe^. 



Medicinal Plants, being Descriptions with Original Figures of the 

 Principal Plants employed in Medicine, and an account of their 

 Properties and Uses. By Egbert Bentley, P.L.S., and Heney 

 Trimkn, M.B., F.L.S. Parts 1—8. i^London : Churchill, 1875-6. 

 Pioyal 8vo. 

 Fight monthly parts, containing sixty plants, have already appeared 

 <j[' this publication, which consists of original coloured illustrations, 

 with accompanying descriptive text, of the plants which yield the 

 drugs in common use. Whenever possible, the figures have been 

 drawn from living specimens ; this course, while considerably en- 

 hancing the value of the work as an original contribution to science, 

 has caused the plates to be published without strict regard to their final 

 arrangement, inasmuch as it is not always practicable to obtain a 

 given living species in the state wanted for illustration ; but all the 

 plates and the accompanying text are plainly numbered in accordance 

 with their proper place in the customary sequence of Natural Orders, 

 80 that when the work is finished it will be perfectly easy for the 

 binder to set the arrangement right. In the cases where living speci- 

 mens could not be obtained for illustration, the British Museum has 

 supplied specimens from the Herbarium. 



With each plate a detailed botanical description, which certainly 

 does not generally err on the side of brevity or meagreness, is given, 

 followed by an adequate and often very full discussion of the phar- 

 maceutical names, composition, properties, and uses. It has not been 

 thought necessary to give a description of the genera to which the 

 species sev-erally belong, but relerences are given to books where such 

 information can be found. The drawings have been made, natural 

 size, by Mr. D. Blair, F.L.S. , and the usually enlarged dissections, 

 though sometimes rather black, give them a distinct botanical value. 

 Art critics will perhaps notice in the rendering of some of the plates a 

 perceptible hardness and stiffness of outline which strongly savour of 

 the herbarium rather than suggest nature ; but more extended expe- 

 rience will doubtless enable the artist to overcome this difficulty with 

 greater and more general success. 



With regard to the execution of the work from a botanical point of 

 view, the authors are to be generally commended for the care that 

 they have evidently taken in selecting and citing with dates and 

 synonymy the botanical names used by them, after the best manner of 

 modern writers ; additional figures of the species (when they exist) 

 are also quoted. Two species, StilUyigia sylvatica, Linn., and jDorema 

 Aucheri, Boiss,, are here figured for the first time. 



On a critical examination of the formal particulars of nomenclature, 

 a few, mostly unimportant, remarks can be made which may perhaps 

 tend to prevent the possibility of the like criticism applying to the 

 forthcoming parts of the work. The name of Lobelia inflata is ascribed 

 to Linnaeus, as if published by him in the " Acta 8ocietatis Eegise 

 Scientiarum TJpsaliensis ad annum mdccxli." (Stoekh., 1746); the 

 fact is that Linnaeus in the above paper, pages 23-26, published this 

 plant under the phrase of " Lobelia caule erecto, foliis ovatis subser- 



