1872.] Notices of Books. 373 
sition obtained as educts from vegetable substances, and here 
the latest discoveries are introduced. In the third division a 
description is given of medicines derived from the animal king- 
dom, including bodies of definite chemical composition obtained 
as educts from animal substances. 
In studying Materia Medica much assistance is gained from 
good illustrations. We remember well the good we derived in 
our own studies from Stephenson and Churchill’s valuable 
work on ‘‘ Medical Botany ;” but as this work is far too scarce 
for many students to possess a copy, we shall be glad, in a 
future edition of the work before us, to see engravings of all the 
more important plants, &c., instead of so many references to plates 
in scarce or expensive works on Medical Botany, which, in most 
cases can only be consulted at the Pharmaceutical or Medical 
Libraries. 
This abridgment of Dr. Pereira’s excellent work reflects the 
greatest credit on its Editors, and we commend it to the student 
of medicine and pharmacy as a necessary companion when 
preparing for examination. 
Official Handbook to the Marine Aquarium of the Crystal Palace 
Aquarium Company. By W. A. Luoyp, Superintendent of 
the Aquarium. Second Edition. 1872. Pp. 64. 
Ir is not often that the guide book of a public exhibition comes 
under the notice of the reviewer, such publications in the 
majority of instances being mere catalogues, and but rarely pos- 
sessing any scientific interest. The present little book is, how- 
ever, an agreeable exception. 
After explaining the arrangement and general contents of the 
thirty-eight tanks comprised in the public portion of the aqua- 
rium, the author devotes twenty-nine pages to the history of the 
Marine Aquarium. Among the earliest notices is the following 
quaint extract from Pepys’s Diary :—‘‘ Thence to see my Lady 
Pen, where my wife and I were shown a fine rarity; of fishes 
kept in a glass of water, that will live so for ever—and finely 
marked they are being foreign.” The experiments of Madame 
Power, the late Dr. N. B. Ward, Dr. George Johnston, and 
Sir John Graham Dalyell, are described. These are followed 
by an account of the first entirely successful marine aquaria, 
the simultaneous results of the trials of the late Robert 
Warington and Mr. P. H. Gosse, F.R.S. Then follows an 
account of the various public aquaria, commencing with that of 
the Zoological Society, and describing most of those at home 
and on the Continent. The principles necessary to the main- 
tenance of unchanged sea-water in a condition fit for the 
support of animal life are discussed at some length, and a 
detailed account given of the contrivances employed at the 
