Miscellanies. 177 



countries of Europe, with some strictures upon the manner in which 

 it is conducted in this country. This and each of the three succeed- 

 ing numbers, contains a colored plate of some medicinal plant, with 

 a botanical and pharmaceutical account of it by D. B. Smith. These 

 " very faithful and spirited engravings" were executed from drawings 

 by Dr. W. P. C. Barton, for his Medical Flora of the United States, 

 and it is intended to publish one of these in every future number of 

 the Journal. 



In the fourth number of the second volume, however, in lieu of a 

 plant, we have a colored engraving of certain indigenous species of 

 the genus Cantharis of Latreille, as fit substitutes for the blistering fly 

 of the shops, with an elaborate description of the insect by Elias B. 

 Durand. To this gentleman the Journal is indebted for various other 

 communications, indicative of taste and science. 



In the same concluding number of the second volume, is an ad- 

 dress delivered to the graduates of the college, in October last, by 

 Henry Troth, Esq. one of the vice presidents. This is a spirited 

 and sensible address, urging upon the young members of the pro- 

 fession of pharmacy, those dispositions and habits that cannot fail, if 

 properly cherished, to rescue the trade from various existing blem- 

 ishes, and render the dispensers of physic, in all its departmentSj 

 more enlightened and respectable. 



But of all the original articles in the two published volumes of this 

 Journal, that which displays the most learning is a "Review of the 

 Pharmacopoeia of the United States of America, by the authority of 

 the General Convention for the formation of the American Pharma- 

 copoeia, held in 1830. Second edition, (from the first edition, pub- 

 lished in 1820,) with additions and corrections. New York; pub- 

 lished by S. Converse. November, 1830." 



This review bears upon the face of it, the ability of an experien- 

 ced pharmacien ; and we shall probably not miss the mark very 

 widely, in ascribing it, as we do at a venture, to the pen of the presi- 

 dent of the college. 



The reviewer observes in the outset, with no less truth than pun- 

 gency, that in the examination of such a vi^ork as a pharmacopoeia, 

 (especially, we may add, when it claims the authority of a national 

 code,) a spirit of severe criticism may be laudably indulged. We 

 cannot follow him through the twenty pages which he has devoted to 

 this interesting examination. He has indulged a spirit of wholesome 

 severity ; and although a book which requires such rigid exactness 



Vol. XXL— No. 1. 23 



