Miscellanies. 173 



ited or indiscriminate eulogy, or censure, but, by presenting such a 

 view of their labors and merits, as may comport with the limited 

 space and means which we may have to devote to such an object. 



Without intending to convert this Journal into a review, or to de- 

 part from that simplicity, and matter of fact character, which it has 

 been our desire to sustain, we may sometimes advert to what others 

 are doing, but always, we trust, with that comity which should ever 

 prevail among those who, with enlightened aims and motives of benef- 

 icence, are travelling the same road. 



This purpose is consistent with our original design, for, the score 

 of volumes by which we are now known to the world, contain numer- 

 ous analyses of scientific publications. We have performed this du- 

 ty, however, rather incidentally, and it may be that this will be all 

 which we can, consistently with other duties, perform in future. It 

 would doubtless be interesting and instructive to most readers, to have 

 presented to them a panoramic view of the state and progress of sci- 

 entific literature, and were it in our power to accomplish such a re- 

 view with distinctness and discrimination, we should no more doubt 

 of its utility than that it is compatible with the primary objects of the 

 American Journal. Our pages must still be devoted, mainly, to ori- 

 ginal communications. Our ambition has ever been to render the 

 journal eminently national; — and we are aware that to sustain this 

 character, every facility must be afforded I'br the cultivation of nativ^e 

 talent, and for the exhibition of the results of native research. 



1. Journal of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. — Edited 

 by Benjamin Ellis, M. D. Prof, of Mat. Med. and Phar. in the 

 College, assisted by a publishing committee consisting of Daniel B.. 

 Smith, Charles Ellis, S. P. Grijfltts, Jr., and George B. Wood^ 

 M. D. Prof, of Chemistry in the College, &j'C. Published by the 

 College. — This is a quarterly periodical, commenced in the month 

 of December, 1825, under the auspices of the Philadelphia College of 

 Pharmacy, an institution which was incorporated in 1822, and which 

 w^as the first association of the kind in the Uhited States. It origi- 

 nally comprehended sixty eight druggists and apothecaries, then about 

 half the number in Philadelphia. Its influence over the habits of 

 apothecaries, and of physicians themselves, within the first ten years 

 of its existence, we are induced to believe, has been decidedly ad- 

 vantageous. It has been followed by a similar incorporation in the 

 city of New York. An institution of this kind in such a place as 



