356 Bibliographical Notices. 



a disgrace to a country like this, which professes to be pre-eminently 

 practical, that so little attention should have hitherto been paid to 

 furnishing the rising generation with some sound general information 

 on a subject which should be of so much importance in a commercial 

 community. The knowledge of " common things " does, however, 

 at present appear to be making some little progress amongst us, 

 and the present Uttle work, which contains a brief account of the 

 principal commercial products of the vegetable kingdom, forms a 

 welcome addition to our scanty stock of elementary books on these 

 subjects. 



It appears to have been brought out under the auspices of the 

 " Department of Science and Art." and we presume will be adopted 

 as a class-book in those educational establishments which derive their 

 inspiration from that source. The conception of the work is good, 

 and appears to have been well and carefully carried out. We must 

 obsei've, however, that the author's acquaintance with chemistry 

 appears to be rather imperfect; — at least on those occasions where he 

 has, unnecessarily as it appears to us, introduced any chemical infor- 

 mation, his statements are generally calculated rather to mislead 

 than to instruct the student. Thus, at p. 145, we are informed 

 that the non-oxygenated essential oils " are very inflammable, burning 

 like coal-gas, of which they appear to he a mere concentration ;" 

 and again, at p. 140, we are told that "oleine and stearine are 

 oxides of a peculiar substance called by chemists ghjceryte, .... in 

 other words, oleine consists of an acid called oleic acid and this sweet 

 substance ylyceryle, whilst stearine is a compound of stearic acid 

 and glyceryle," — from which it would appear that the author has no 

 very definite idea of what is meant by an oxide. 



It is greatly to be regretted that such errors as these should have 

 been alloweil to creep into a book, which, in other respects, has cer- 

 tainly much to recommend it, and it is not much to the credit of the 

 "Department of Science and Art," whose head certainly has some 

 pretensions to a knowledge of chemistry, that blunders of this nature 

 are to be detected in a work published under their auspices. It is 

 not sufficient that an educational work should be unimpeachable as 

 regards the particular subject of which it treats; care must also be 

 taken that its ])ages are not made the means of inculcating false 

 notions upon those branches of science which are only incidentally 

 referred to. 



We may add that the work is illustrated with twenty lithographic 

 plates, representing some of the more important plants, and a few of 

 the commercial products referred to in the text : these appear to be 

 exceedingly characteristic. 



The Ento/nologisfs Annua! for 185.5. Edited by H. T. Stainton. 

 Second Edition. London, 1855. Van Voorst. 12 mo. 



It is not long since we noticed, in the pages of this Journal, the 

 appearance of the first edition of this little work, and we must con- 

 gratulate the editor on his miscalculation of the number of his 



