12 
THE PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY. 
Howell ought to have known that the Privy Council of Ireland 
is as distinct from that of Great Britain as the two countries 
are, and that each can make just such regulations as it sees 
fit for adoption by the local authority. 
Many veterinary surgeons seem to write and speak of 
Orders of Council as if they should be framed to meet their 
professional views only.of what is right or wrong, forgetting 
that a Government has to consider general interests as far 
as possible in any Order it is empowered by law to make. 
We confess to the bad working of the Contagious Diseases 
(Animals) Act, more especially in the case of foot-and- 
mouth disease, but the fault rests with the local authority, 
and not with the chief executive. 
With regard to the other point raised, that of the 
publication of the names of exhibitors and award of prizes 
at the meetings of the Royal Agricultural Society, we have only 
to state that these details are given for the very reason which 
Mr. Howell assigns, viz. that the Veterinarian is a work to 
be handed down from father to son. Thus, we have spared 
no pains to make it one of future reference. Its readers and 
supporters are not veterinary surgeons only, but agriculturists 
and stock-owners, and it is well for the profession that it is 
so, or the progress in veterinary science would be much 
slower than would be desirable.]— Eds. 
THE PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY. 
By Professor James Buckman, F.G.S., F.L.S., &c. &c. 
(Continued from vol. xiiv, p. 890.) 
In completion of our remarks upon the Dictyogens, we 
would now direct attention to two plants—the Sarsaparilla 
and the Herb Paris. 
The different species of the genus Smilax are well known 
under the name of sarsaparilla, the latter name derived from 
the Spanish Zarzaparilla (from “zarza,” a bramble; and 
“ parilla,” a vine), signifying a thorny vine. 
This drug, though not used in veterinary practice, is yet 
so much employed in the human school that from two to 
three hundred thousand pounds of the rhizomata are imported 
in a single year, and so important is the so-called <f root” 
considered that Dr. Pereira devotes no less than twenty-five 
pages of his ( Materia Medica’ to an account of its descrip- 
