338 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[April ID, 1873 
can a long column of ice move down rugged slopes, now 
narrowing as it is embraced by the walls of a chasm, now 
spreading and filling the interval between its wider banks, 
or as the author well figures it, at one time resembling 
a plate of ice laid flat,” at another, “a plate fixed on 
-edge,” and invariably throughout its downward course 
.adapting itself most wonderfully to the irregularities of 
•the surface over which it passes. Passing over explana¬ 
tions, only mentioned to be refuted, we find a satisfactory 
clue to the true one in the fact that ice is melted not only 
by heat, but also by pressure, and regealed when the 
pressure is removed. By powerful pressure in suitable 
moulds ice can be made to take any form we please ; it is 
plain then that the lower parts of the glacier partially 
melted by the pressure of the upper portions assume tem¬ 
porarily a plastic condition, and hence their remarkable 
power of conforming to the unevenness of the rocks below. 
Such is a brief and somewhat imperfect outline of the 
interesting little volume,—a few preliminary paragraphs 
leading to the subject of glaciers, a very real, though 
imaginary visit to these vast “ice-streams,” during which 
the author explains in a simple manner what is known, 
chiefly what he himself has discovered by careful expe¬ 
riment and observation, about these interesting though 
long-neglected natural phenomena ; and then a reference 
in conclusion to the evidences of former wide-spread “glacial 
.action ” visible in many parts of the United Kingdom. 
This little book is well calculated to remove much of the 
deplorable ignorance of natural phenomena and their 
laws shown by the otherwise well-educated of the present 
day, as it cannot fail to be intelligible and interesting to 
any thoughtful reader, and will serve as a model of the 
way in which we should search into the processes in con¬ 
stant operation around us and unravel their laws. May 
many more such “Romances of Fact” be written to 
counteract the evil influence of the too numerous “ Ro¬ 
mances of fiction.” 
Ur RUNDLAGEN DER PHARMACEUTISCHEN WaARENIvUNDE 
EINLEITUNG IN DAS STUDIUM DER PHARMACOGNOSIE. 
Von Dr. F. A. Fluckiger. pp. v.; 133, and 104 illus¬ 
trations. Berlin : J. Springer. 
This book does infinite credit alike to the pharmaceutical 
profession of North Germany, to the public, and to its 
author—to the two former because it implies a state of 
technical education, and a recognition of the necessity of 
it, to which we in England are strangers. By this book 
pharmacy is reckoned a learned profession, requiring long 
and patient training. The pharmacist is a man of science, 
.fully conversant with not only the names and medicinal 
properties of his drugs, and with their more salient chemi¬ 
cal properties, as all English pharmacists are supposed to 
be, but also with the minute structure of such as are de¬ 
rived from the vegetable kingdom, and, further, with the 
ife_ history, morphology, and physiology of the plants from 
which they are derived. With such a man of high cul- 
i; ure imaged in his mind, Professor Fluckiger has written 
a book worthy of his own high reputation, and quite unlike 
any English book. By diligent compilation from the 
works of English botanists and pharmacists, and the 
various papers from all sources published in this Journal, 
it would be possible perhaps to make something like it. 
But such a book would lack the unity of plan which 
•characterizes Professor Fluckiger’s, and above all would 
not be, as our author’s book is, an A B C guide to the 
pharmacological workshop. The professor insists upon 
the pharmacist possessing as intimate a knowledge of his 
drugs as the physician and surgeon must know of their 
medicinal properties, and of the anatomy and physiology 
of man and other animals. He would have him know, 
in fact, all that the advanced vegetable anatomist and 
physiologist knows, and more. It is evident that a book 
thus written is likely to be a very different thing from a 
book written for a more or less decided “ cram,” such as 
jnost English textbooks are. It is, in fact, simply an in¬ 
troduction—a guide book—to downright hard work in 
one small department of the vast field of pharmacology, 
and is very largely an elementary treatise on vegetable 
anatomy and physiology, having as its object to lead the 
student to the investigation of the natural chemistry by 
which pharmaceutical substances are elaborated. In 
giving this to the pharmaceutical student, our author has 
placed within the reach of an ordinary botanist a novel 
and most valuable work ; in truth, saving a few pages, 
the book is a botanical treatise, combining the better 
qualities of the larger works of Schleiden, Mohl, and our 
own Henfrey. For the earlier portion the botanist will 
be all the better, although it must be confessed that these 
portions are the least complete and valuable. The biblio¬ 
graphy, to mention one point only, is extremely deficient. 
English works—with two exceptions, those of Pereira and 
Royle and Headland—are not alluded to, and Mr. John 
E. Howard’s magnificent ‘Quinology’ is wholly ignored, 
whilst continental names of lesser note are included. 
The author’s strong point evidently is vegetable struc¬ 
ture, and he works at this as few but Germans do, with 
an infinite amount of painstaking, and avails himself of 
all the aid that chemistry will afford. The illustrations 
are about the most valuable portion of the book to the 
ordinary reader, who, for example, merely wishes to learn 
something about the structure of medicinal roots, woods, 
and barks. They are singularly well chosen and admir¬ 
ably drawn. The drawings illustrating the author’s de¬ 
scriptions of various modifications of cell structure are 
cases in point. Take for instance the scalariform vessels 
of Rhizoma Filicis; no essential portion of the structure 
is omitted, nor on the other hand is the drawing encum¬ 
bered by exceptional details. The markings of the vessels, 
with all their regular irregularity, so to speak, are shown to 
the life. The boldly diagrammatic figures in the following 
page of the “ Porencanalen” and “ Steinzellen ” (felicitous 
expression this) of China bark are the best we have 
seen of such structures, whilst the drawings on page 38 of 
similar stone cells (stellate cells of Hassal) seen by polar¬ 
ized light are simply exquisite ; but we differ from the 
author in advising the use of balsam instead of glycerine, 
as used by himself. 
Roots, tubercules, stalks, wood bark, fruits, seeds, leaves, 
and flowers, are all described at greater length than we 
can possibly follow here, and each section is copiously 
illustrated whenever such illustration is necessary, and 
always from official plants. Take, for instance, the por¬ 
tion relating to the latex vessels (our author includes some 
doubtfully latex vessels in his term milchsafte); we have 
first a drawing of the semi-vessel, semi-cell of Jalapa, then 
of the fig, and three different figures of the milk system 
of dandelion root, these latter showing the varied cha¬ 
racter of the vessels, and to some extent also their 
development. But the best figures in the book, and this 
is not easy to say in the face of the admirable figures of 
stomates and seeds of certain umbellifers immediately 
preceding them, are those of stems and roots distributed 
very freely between pages 55 and 88. The first on which 
we light is that of cascarilla bark, where the characteristic 
stone cells are very accurately drawn, and the binary cell 
contents carefully distinguished. 
Other illustrations, however, surpass this. To take the 
best in the book, there are Aconitum napellus, transverse 
and vertical, Actcect spicata, with the various structures 
carefully shown, but in the case of aconite imperfectly de¬ 
scribed, sections of cinchonae, sassafras, etc., and above 
all, an unequalled section of Lignum quassice. The one 
distinguishing feature of these illustrations is their gene¬ 
ral fidelity to nature. There is no attempt made to show 
every detail, clearly impossible of performance, but every 
effort is made to produce a drawing that shall show the 
general appearance of the structure. We submitted them 
to a tolerably severe test. Turning the book upside down, 
we tried how many of the drawings we could name, and 
were surprised to find that where a name could be ven¬ 
tured upon, the object being not always sufficiently well 
