372 Notices of Books. [July, 
These are the ‘‘sea monsters,” “‘the moving creature that hath 
life,” the huge Saurians of the Lias and Oolite. The ‘ fowl” in 
the expanse of heaven are first found in the Upper Oolite, but it 
is scarcely so clear as the author would make out that the birds 
were numerous in the period of the chalk. Perhaps we should 
scarcely look for the remains of birds at the bottom of a deep sea, 
and we hardly know what may have been the contemporaneous 
land. ‘The sixth day describes in the Meiocene times the crea- 
tion the huge mammals of the pachydermatous genus, whilst 
man follows all in a period still antecedent to the present 
‘seventh day,” in which the present order of things continues 
mostly unchanged under a reign of law. All this is told plea- 
santly in flowing blank verse, which rather weakly challenges 
comparison with Milton. 
Dr. Pereiva’s Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics. 
Abridged and Adapted for the Use of Medical and Pharma- 
ceutical Practitioners and Students, and Comprising all the 
Medicines of the British Pharmacopceia, with such others 
as are Frequently Ordered in Prescriptions or Required by 
the Physician. Edited by Robert Bent ey, M.R.C.S., 
F.L.S., and THEopHILUS REDWooD, Ph.D., F.C.S. London: 
Longmans, Green, and Co. 
Tuis abridgment of Dr. Pereira’s great work will be welcomed 
both by medical and pharmaceutical students. The original 
work, valuable as it was, contained much matter which was not 
required by the student, and its great bulk rendered it too expen- 
sive for many to possess it. In 1865, Dr. Farre, Professor 
Bentley, and the late Robert Warington, prepared an abridgment 
which came within the reach of all, and which was certainly a 
most useful book, the appearance of the ‘ British Pharma- 
copoeia,” however, and the rapid progress of the science of 
Materia Medica, rendered another edition necessary, and we are 
glad that its preparation was entrusted to such competent men 
as Professors Bentley and Redwood. The medicines described 
comprise in addition to those of the ‘“ British Pharmacopeceia,” 
many remedies frequently ordered by medical practitioners, and 
more space might with advantage have been allotted to some of 
these remedies, the information in some instances being, we 
think, insufficient for the student. The first part of the work is 
devoted to the new system of chemical notation (the symbols 
and atomic weights being given according to both the old and 
new systems); a description of medicines derived from the 
mineral kingdom and definite chemical compounds, organic as 
well as inorganic, which are obtained as products of decomposi- 
tion. The second part embraces medicines derived from the 
vegetable kingdom, including bodies of definite chemical compo- 
