October 28, 1871.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
357 
of the Museum of Practical Geology. He was also a 
Trustee of the British Museum and Director-General of 
the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom. 
In 1863 he was nominated K.C.B., and created a 
baronet in 1866. From the Universities of Oxford, Cam¬ 
bridge and Dublin, and nearly all the learned societies 
of the Continent, he received recognition of his services 
to science. 
Sir Roderick Murchison married in 1815 a daughter of 
the late General Hugonin, who diod in 1869 without 
issue; the title becomes extinct. Sir Roderick was seized, 
two months since, with loss of speech and difficulty of 
swallowing, which symptoms, however, gradually abated. 
On the Thursday previous to his death he caught cold 
while taking a drive, which brought on bronchitis, under 
which he sank. 
CHARLES BABBAGE, F.R.S. 
Death has removed a great mathematician and mecha¬ 
nician in the person of Mr. Charles Babbage. Born in 
1790, he received his early education from the Rev. 
Stephen Freeman, of Forty Hill, Enfield, Middlesex, 
where he had for a schoolfellow the late Captain Marryat, 
R.N., the novelist. He entered early at Trinity College, 
Cambridge, and took his B.A. degree in 1814. He did 
not compete for a Wranglership, as he believed that the 
late Sir John Ilerschel was sure to secure the highest 
place on the list, and Babbage coveted no other; but in 
1828 he was nominated to the Lucasian Professorship of 
Mathematics in his old university, a chair which he held 
eleven years. 
While yet a student at Cambridge ho was associated 
with the late Sir John Herschel and Dean Peacock in 
advocating- the introduction of a knowledge of the more 
refined analytical methods of Continental mathematicians 
amongst English students. The result was the forma¬ 
tion of the so-called “ Analytical Society,” and to these 
efforts may be attributed, in no small degree, the high 
position now assigned to English mathematics. 
Besides some literary work undertaken jointly with 
the above-mentioned gentlemen, Mr. Babbage published, 
in 1834, his extremely correct and well arranged ‘ Tables 
of Logarithms,’ and the difficulty of securing accuracy 
in the working out of such tables on a large scale seems 
to have first suggested to him the work by which his 
name is now best known, the construction of a calcu¬ 
lating machine. Having been promised Government 
assistance, he visited the principal centres of machine 
labour in this country, and on the Continent, studying 
the various forms of mechanism and the work performed 
by each. He then set to work upon his ‘‘Difference 
Engine,” and by 1833 had so far advanced in its con¬ 
struction that he was enabled to demonstrate satisfactorily 
the practicability of his scheme. But as the work went 
on Babbage’s aims were extended; he contemplated 
also an “ Analytical Machine.” The Government were 
alarmed at the possible expense of the experiments; 
some differences arose with the engineer who had assisted 
Dim in the manufacture of the intricate machinery, and 
the whole project was abandoned, after it had cost its 
inventor some thousands of pounds from his private 
purse. The engine and the drawings, after an offer from 
the Government that they should remain as his property 
Ead been declined by Mr. Babbage, were presented, in 
1840, to King’s College, London. 
An able work on ‘ The Economy of Manufactures and 
Machinery (1832),’ containing the results of the investi¬ 
gations before alluded to, ‘ A Ninth Bridgewater Trea¬ 
tise,’ designed to combat the thesis that the study of 
mathematics is unfavourable to religious faith; ‘ The 
Decline of Science,’ and ‘ Passages on the Life of a Phi¬ 
losopher (1864),’ of an autobiographical character, are a 
few of the other works for which we are indebted to Mr. 
Babbage. In 1832, he contested unsuccessfully the 
borough of Finsbury in the advanced liberal interest. 
Mr. Babbage died towards the end of last week, at his 
residence in Dorset Square, in his eightieth year. 
Hcteeto. 
On the Study and Value of Chinese Botanical 
"Works; with Notes on the History of Plants and 
Geographical Botany from Chinese Sources. By E. 
Bretsciineider, M.D., Physician of the Russian Le¬ 
gation at Peking. Illustrated with eight Chinese 
Woodcuts. 
Though Dr. Bretschneider professes to be neither a 
sinologue nor a botanist, he has collected together in 
this pamphlet of only fifty-one pages some valuable notes 
on Chinese plants, and their uses. He tells us at the com¬ 
mencement that his object has been to show in what 
manner the Chinese treat natural science, and specially 
botany, and what advantage can be drawn by European 
savants from the study of Chinese botanical works. 
We have not space to consider this interesting pam¬ 
phlet in detail, we must therefore content ourselves with 
a glance at some of its most important and interesting- 
features. The author says, “ The Chinese knowledge of 
plants is as old as their medicine and agriculture, and 
dates from remote antiquity. In ancient Greece the first 
botanists were the gatherers of medical plants. In the 
same manner the ancient Chinese got acquainted with 
plants for the most part in their application to medical 
purposes. There is a tradition amongst the Chinese, 
that the Emperor Sheu-nung, who reigned about 2700 
b.c., is the father of agriculture and medicine. He 
sowed first the five kinds of corn and put together the 
first treatise on medical plants in a work known as Slien - 
nung-pen-ts'ao-lcing, classical herbal of Shen-nung (gene¬ 
rally quoted by Chinese authors under the name of j 'lea¬ 
king), which became the foundation of all the later works 
on the same subject. This is a small work of three 
chapters, and enumerates, according to the Pen-ts’ao, in 
all 347 medicines; 239 of them are plants, for the most 
part wild-growing plants, but only very few cultivated 
ones. It follows from the accounts given by Li-shi-cheu 
of the work (preface of the Pen-ts’ao-Jcang-mu), that at 
first it existed only in verbal tradition. It is not known 
at what time the Shen-nung-pen-ts'ao was first written 
down, but there can be no doubt that it is one of the 
most ancient documents of Chinese materia medica. 
“ Another very ancient work which gives accounts of 
plants, known by the Chinese in ancient times, is the 
Rhe-ya, a dictionary of terms used in Chinese ancient 
writings, which, according to tradition, has been handed 
down in part from the twelfth century b.c. The greatest 
part, however, is attributed to Tsu-sia, a disciple of 
Confucius.” In this work, it appears, nearly 300 plants, 
and as many animals, are enumerated; and drawings 
are also given. The first purely botanical w r ork in the 
Chinese language seems to have been by Ki-han, an 
author of the Tsin dynasty (265-419); after this came 
numerous works on materia medica and plants, till the 
appearance of the Fen-ts' ao-kang-mu, which is the type 
of all the Chinese productions of this class. It contains 
extracts from more than 800 preceding authors, and 
was published at the close of the sixteenth century, 
having occupied Li-shi-cheu, its author, thirty years in 
its preparation. 
Though, as we have seen, some attention has been 
given by the Chinese to the natural history of their 
country, the properties and applications of the several 
products have never been properly considered. Dr. 
Bretschneider remarks that the whole of the Chinese 
medical science is nonsense ; their practice is, for the 
most part, not the result of experience.. They have 
neither studied anatomy and the physiological functions 
of the human body, nor have they investigated, free 
