Aug, 31, 1876] 



NATURE 



367^ 



no amount of personal labour, was spared to clear 

 up or elucidate the smallest point bearing on the sub- 

 ject he was engaged in investigating. A good illus- 

 tration of his mode of working is furnished by a paper 

 read before a meeting of the British. Pharmaceutical Con- 

 gress held at Brighton, in 1872, " On Calabrian Manna." 

 Manna is stated, in the " British Pharmacopoeia " of 1867, 

 to be " a concrete saccharine exudation from the stem of 

 Fraxititis Ornus, L., and F. roiimdi/olia, D. C, which 

 trees are cultivated for the purpose of yielding it 

 chiefly in Calabria and Sicily." Never having heard 

 of manna plantations in Calabria, nor seen Cala- 

 brian manna, Hanbury determined, after having ac- 

 quainted himself with the literature of the subject, 

 ancient and modem, to visit Italy himself in order to 

 set the question at rest. At Florence he found the article 

 almost unknown. Reaching Rossano, a town in Calabria 

 Citra, he there found that the manna trees grow on some 

 of the adjacent mountains, but are not cultivated ; and 

 that the collecting of the manna is a very small and in- 

 significant branch of industry. " The habits of the 

 Calabrian peasantry," he naively observes, " are such that 

 it is impossible for travellers to quit the high roads with- 

 out personal danger." At Corigliano, which, according 

 to Murray's " Handbook," produces " the finest manna 

 in Calabria," the industry is altogether extinct. At Co- 

 zensa, the capital of the province, anciently renowned for 

 manna, he found the substance almost unknown to the 

 druggists, one of whom assured him that its collection 

 had been prohibited for the last six or seven years. 

 Finally, a prominent English merchant at Messina was 

 ignorant of the existence of such a commodity. '.The con- 

 clusion to which Mr. Hanbury came was that Cala- 

 brian manna has practically ceased to exist as an article 

 of commerce, and that its collection in that part of Italy 

 is on the verge of extinction. With regard, also, to De 

 Candolle's species of manna-ash, Fraxinus roimidifolia, 

 Hanbury's observations on the spot induced him to believe 

 that while the F. Or7ius is a very variable plant, there is 

 no special form of it, and still less any distinct species, 

 answering to the characters of F. rotiindifolia. 



By similar exhaustive investigations, Mr. Hanbury 

 determined various other pharmacological questions of 

 greater or less importance, of which two may be specially 

 mentioned. In his paper on Storax, he shows that while 

 the substance known under this name in ancient times 

 was obtained from the Styrax officinale, L., it has alto- 

 gether disappeared from the commerce of modem days, 

 the resin now known as liquid storax being — notwith- 

 standing erroneous assertions to the contrary in some 

 writings of high authority — the product of a totally dif- 

 ferent tree, Liquidatnbar orientate, Mill., a native of the 

 south-west of Asia Minor, where the drug is collected. 

 The drug known in the British Pharmacopoeia as 

 " Pareira brava" was referred by most writers, with- 

 out question, to the stem and root of Cissampelos 

 Pareira, L., a climbing plant of the order Meni- 

 spermaceae, growing in the tropical regions of both the 

 Old and New World. A scarcity of the article in- 

 duced Mr. Hanbury, some years ago, to endeavour to 

 obtain a supply from the West Indies. Having been fur- 

 nished with the stems and roots of the plant in question, 

 not only from Jamaica, but aLio from Trinidad, Ceylon, 



and Brazil, he soon discovered that the accepted state- 

 ment was altogether erroneous. He then set himself to 

 discover what " Pareira brava " really is ; and a careful 

 examination of the different descriptions by botanists and 

 travellers, and of specimens obtained from various cor- 

 respondents, led him to identify it with Chondodendron 

 tomentosum, Ruiz et Pav., a native of Brazil, belonging to 

 the same natural order. Mr. Hanbury was in the habit of 

 preserving and carefully labelling, in his own museum, 

 specimens of anything that could bear on the subjects of 

 his inquiries ; and his investigations were greatly assisted 

 by unusual opportunities for growing foreign plants fur- 

 nished by an extensive garden with abundance of glass, 

 cold and heated, in one of the suburbs of London. Here 

 was a true " botanic garden " to delight the heart of a 

 pharmaceutist. 



Mr. Hanbury's presence is sorely missed by his fellow- 

 members of the various learned societies to which he 

 belonged, especially of the two from the meetings of which 

 he was seldom absent — the Pharmaceutical and the Lin- 

 nean ; where his varied information was constantly giving 

 life to the discussions, his urbanity of manner smoothing 

 down any difference of opinion, and his business habits 

 ready to assist at a critical moment. The last few 

 months of his life saw the publication of his most sub- 

 stantial contribution to literature, the " Pharmacogra- 

 phia," brought out in joint authorship with his friend 

 Prof. Fliickiger, of Strasburg, to the importance of which 

 these pages have already called attention. 



DYNAMITE 

 Die Dynamite, ihre Eigenscha/ten nnd Gebraiicksiveise. 

 Von Isidor Trauzl. (Berlin : Verlag von Wiegandt, 

 Hempel, und Parey, 1876.) 



THE instructive brochure published under the above 

 title affords an interesting illustration of the wide- 

 spread applications now received by those violent explo- 

 sive agents, nitroglycerine and gun-cotton, the practical 

 value of which was regarded as doubtful even twelve 

 years ago, by all but the few who devoted themselves in- 

 defatigably to the development of the manufacture, purifi- 

 cation, and application of those substances. Capt. Isidor 

 Trauzl has for some time past been intimately connected 

 with the dynamite industry on the Continent, and is a 

 very intelligent exponent of the properties and uses of the 

 nitroglycerine preparations which owe their origin to the 

 sagacity, ingenuity, and untiring labours of Alfred Nobel. 

 The endeavours of Nobel to overcome the uncertainty 

 and danger attending the application of nitroglycerine in 

 its undiluted condition as an explosive agent, were even- 

 tually crowned with success by his elaboration of the 

 plastic nitroglycerine preparations known as dynamites, 

 of which the earliest, and that specially known as Nobel's 

 dynamite, consists of the infusorial earth, kieselguhr, 

 mixed with about three times its weight of nitroglycerine, 

 which it holds absorbed, even under considerable varia- 

 tions of temperature, if the preparation be carefully manu- 

 factured. This material is the most violent nitroglycerine 

 preparation now in use ; it closely resembles Abel's 

 compressed gun-cotton in explosive power as well as in 

 regard to its action, and it is now very extensively used 

 in all parts of the world, for mining, engineering, and 

 other industrial purposes. 



