THE AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
7 
The sequel of Botany is Materia Medica. Without Chemistry and Botany no one can 
properly become an accomplished pharmacist. The range of Materia Medica is so wide 
and diversified that to be a thorough master of this branch of knowledge would require 
even more than an acquaintance with Chemistry and Botany. Physics, Zoology, and 
Physiology would require to be mastered. You must carefully study all the roots, stems, 
leaves, and seeds of plants, the various crystalline forms of chemical substances, the 
differing and peculiar characters of gums, resins, and other products of the vegetable and 
animal kingdom. You must also direct your minds to the geographical sources of 
substances used in medicine. The day has long past by for the defective knowledge 
which was formerly prevalent to be again allowed by the State. Pharmacy is a branch 
of medicine — the handmaid of the physician. We should be a remarkable people if we, 
while giving the highest possible education to our physicians and surgeons, made no 
provision for the education of pharmacists. I venture to hope that the Governments of 
these colonies will, in a wise and enlightened spirit, guard your art from being practised 
in any form by anyone who shall not have obtained his credentials after a due course of 
study and examination. 
Let each student pay the closest attention, use his eyes, train his hands, observe all 
the manipulations and experiments of the lecturer ; with pencil in hand note down all 
leading thoughts and principles. The attentive student is the good scholar, passes his 
examinations with ease, and has eveiy fair prospect of a prosperous career in the future. 
The diploma which you will receive is a mark of the confidence reposed in you ; it is not 
an intimation that you need study and learn no more. Far from it ; however well you 
may satisfy the examiners, you must not forget that, in order to take your true place and 
maintain it, you must be ever learning. 
In the language of one who was an example of all that was wise, good, and great, 
John Stuart Mill, I will close my remarks. 
“ Having once conquered the first difficulties — the only ones of which the irksome- 
ness surpasses the interest : having turned the point beyond which — what was once a task 
becomes a pleasure. In even the busiest after-life the higher powers of your mind will 
make progress imperceptibly, by the spontaneous exercise of your thoughts, and by the 
lessons you will know how to learn from daily experience.” “ Nor let anyone be 
discouraged by what may seem, in moments of despondency, the lack of time and oppor- 
tunity. Those who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create 
them ; and what we achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess than on the use we 
make of our time. You, and your like, are the hope and resource of your country in the 
coming generation. All great things which that generation is destined to do have to be 
done by some like you. . . . I do not attempt to instigate you by any prospect of 
direct rewards, either earthly or heavenly ; the less we think about being rewarded in 
either way the better for us. But there is one reward which will not fail you, and which 
may be called disinterested, because it is not a consequence, but is inherent in the very 
fact of deserving it : the deeper and more varied interest you will feel in life, which will 
give it tenfold its valuo, and a value which will last to the end. All merely personal 
objects grow less valuable as we advance in life ; this not only endures but 
increases.” 
MODERN BOTANY IN ITS RELATION TO PHARMACY. 
By D. M‘Alpine, F.C.S., &c. 
Botany is a recognised course in every scheme of pharmaceutical education, and, 
therefore, a few remarks on some recent developments of this science may not bo 
inappropriate. Modern Botany is no longer content with the mere study of plant 
architecture and the recognition of specimens from their structural characteristics, but 
it seeks to lay bare the inner working of the organism, and the life processes of plants 
justly claim a large share of attention. These vital processes determine the various 
structures concerned in carrying them out, and, at the same time, account for many 
products resulting from that vital activity. Hence it is that modern Botany rests on a 
physiological basis, and, for the sake of brevity, our remarks will be grouped under the 
following general heads : — 
1. Plant Physiology, or their normal life processes. 
2. Plant Histology, or the doctrine of their tissues. 
