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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
and other circumstances ; hut headache, confused vision, restlessness, con- 
vulsive clenching of the hands and jaw, vomiting and diarrhoea, attended 
with severe pain in the abdomen, are the most prominent and ordinary. 
The time of death varies from one to eight hours after the poison has been 
swallowed, and hopes may be entertained of the patient’s recovery if the 
fatal termination does not ensue within that period. 
“ The monkshood was introduced here as a garden ornament, or, more 
probably, as a powerful medicinal agent, at a very early period, and 
occupies at present a place in our ‘Materia Medica,’ or catalogue of remedies 
sanctioned by authority. It has no other claim to be considered as one of 
the wild plants of this country than that of being met with growing 
uncultivated in a few places in the western part of England. Its fre- 
quency in the garden, and the careless manner in which its deadly roots 
are often distributed, have induced us to place it, though only an inter- 
loper, at the head of our list of British poisonous plants. The recent 
accident in Scotland, where three persons died in consequence of the roots 
of the monkshood being brought in by a boy from the garden as horse- 
radish, and used by the cook, unconsciously, in preparing sauce for beef, 
added to many others of a similar kind, ought to render gardeners cautious 
in planting, and teach them to avoid placing this and other poisonous 
herbs in the vicinity of those employed for culinary purposes ; and no 
less so in their disposal of superfluous roots where there is a possibility of 
their being found by ignorant people and misappropriated. 
“ The education of the gardener himself, however, is, in too many 
instances, inefficient, as, even when well acquainted with the names of 
plants and the methods of successful cultivation, he is often altogether 
destitute of information regarding their properties and uses. * * ” 
Mr. Sowerby’s plates are very beautiful, and we need not hesitate to 
say that, if anything, they surpass the text in excellence. This edition of 
the work contains four additional plates and descriptive text of the principal 
poisonous Fungi of Great Britain. 
As to the publisher’s share in the work, we shall only say it is a book 
after Mr. Van Voorst’s own pattern ; and the beautiful coloured illus- 
trations render it very suitable for the drawing-room table. 
A Manual of Structural Botany. By M. C. Cooke. Hardwicke. 
R. Cooke has compressed into the smallest possible space, and the 
publisher has produced, at the lowest cost, all the information necessary 
to enable a teacher to instruct a class in the principles of botanical science. 
An excellent feature in the little manual is, the explanation which accom- 
panies every technical term ; and especially in the case of the chemical 
substances, which are very clearly explained ; as, for example : — 
P. “ Phosporus (Phos, gr. light ; phero, to bring) is not found pure in nature ; 
it is extremely inflammable, and emits, by slow combustion, a faint light 
visible in the dark. It is found in combination with those compounds of 
plants which contain nitrogen. During decomposition, phosphorus and 
sulphur enter into combination with hydrogen, and form phosphuretted and 
sulphuretted hydrogen ; with metallic bases phosphorus forms phosphates.” 
Why the terms kalium, natrium, ferrum, and cuprum, are not given in ex- 
planation of the symbolical letters attached to the respective metals we do not 
understand ; and we doubt whether it would not have been possible to find a 
more elegant and equally accurate translation for the word bromos than the 
