* 
98  PHARMACEUTICAL  NOTES  OF  TRAVEL. 
large  apartment  in  the  Royal  Institute.  A  fine  collection  of  spe- 
cimens of  those  departments  of  natural  history  pertaining  to  the 
study  of  pharmacy,  and  of  rare  and  elegant  chemical  products, 
in  a  series  of  flat  and  upright  glass  cases  arranged  parallel  to 
each  other  across  the  apartment,  formed  one  of  the  most  attrac- 
tive pharmaceutical  museums  I  have  ever  visited.  The  mode 
of  mounting  and  displaying  specimens  here  and  elsewhere  in 
England,  struck  me  as  worthy  the  imitation  of  our  colleges  and 
natural  history  societies.  Those  which  stand  in  upright  cases 
near  the  line  of  vision  are  put  into  plain  cylindrical  bottles 
without  shoulders  and  covered  with  a  plate  of  glass,  or  into 
bottles  made  for  the  purpose,  convex  at  the  closed  extremity 
and  terminated  at  the  open  end  by  a  ground  stopper,  so  shaped 
as  to  form  a  stand  for  the  bottle  when  it  is  inverted.  For  the 
specimens  designed  to  be  looked  at  from  above,  these  inverted 
bottles  are  made  of  considerable  diameter  in  proportion  to  their 
height,  while  some  samples,  such  as  nests  of  crystals,  are  placed 
on  glass  dishes  and  covered  with  a  piece  of  plate  glass  or  with 
a  suitable  bell  glass. 
Besides  the  specimens  belonging  to  the  Chemical  Society, 
which,  of  course,  it  would  occupy  too  much  space  to  dwell  upon 
in  this  essay,  the  Royal  Institute  contained  a  great  variety, 
three  series  of  which  especially  interested  me  :  1st.  Sugars  as 
derived  frem  numerous  sources  and  in  their  several  states  of 
preparation  ;  2d,  an  extensive  assortment  of  textile  materials  and 
fabrics,  from  all  climes ;  and  3d,  a  variety  of  products  chiefly 
from  palm  oil  prepared  by  Price's  Candle  Company,  whose 
glycerine  has  obtained  such  an  extensive  sale  in  America.  Some 
of  these  show  a  perfection  in  this  branch  of  manufacture  little 
suspected  by  those  unacquainted  with  the  recent  progress  of  ap- 
plied science  in  this  direction. 
"  The  General  Apothecaries  Company  "  have  an  extensive  and 
elegant  establishment  in  this  city,  and  a  less  conspicuous  one  in 
Birmingham.  This  Company  issue  from  time  to  time  a  publica- 
tion called  the  Record  of  Pharmacy  and  Therapeutics,  which  is 
intended  to  be  sent  to  "every  member  of  the  profession  in 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland."  Of  the  numbers  which  were  fur- 
nished me,  the  first  bears  date  in  1856,  and  in  its  preface  states 
that  "  it  has  not  unfrequently  happened  that  new  remedies  and 
♦ 
