Am.  Jour.  Pliarm. 
July,  1897. 
Reviews. 
375 
medical  science  and  literature  in  all  their  relations  has  been  promoted,  and  the  long  agitated 
subject  of  medical  education  has  reached  the  solid  basis  of  a  fair  academic  education  as  a 
preparatory,  four  years  of  medical  study,  attendance  on  four  annual  courses  of  graded  medi- 
cal college  instruction  of  from  six  to  nine  months  each,  and  licenses  to  practice  to  be  granted 
only  by  State  Boards  of  Medical  Examiners. 
REVIEWS  AND  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTICES. 
The;  Standard  Manual  of  Soda  and  Other  Beverages.  By  A.  Emil 
Hiss,  Ph.G.    G.  P.  Engelhard  &  Co.,  Chicago.  1897. 
Quite  recently  we  reviewed  in  this  Journal,  The  Standard  Formulary,  in 
which  the  author  of  the  present  work  was  associated  in  joint  authorship  with 
Mr.  A.  E.  Ebert.  The  Standard  Manual  is,  therefore,  a  fitting  companion  to  its 
predecessor. 
Chapter  I  is  devoted  to  historical  considerations,  and  is  a  compact  statement 
of  the  growth  of  the  enormous  industry  in  which  "  soda  water"  is  the  founda- 
tion. 
The  second  chapter  is  made  up  of  such  general  directions  as  making  carbon- 
ated water,  discharging  the  generator,  and  all  the  other  manipulations  connected 
with  making  and  dispensing  beverages.  The  remainder  of  the  book,  amounting 
to  nine-tenths,  is  devoted  to  formulas,  in  which  nearly  every  conceivable,  and 
some  inconceivable,  "  soda  water  "  beverages  receive  attention.  "  In  the  soda 
water  drinks,  all  spirituous  preparations  have  been  omitted,  except  in  certain 
well-known  standard  articles,  and  in  the  formulas  received  from  special 
contributors." 
Flowers  of  Field,  Hill  and  Swamp.  By  Caroline  A.  Creevy,  author  of 
Recreations  in  Botany.  The  foregoing  is  the  title  of  a  book  recently  published 
by  Harper  &  Brothers,  New  York. 
It  is  a  botanical  work,  intended  to  instruct  persons  who  have  no  technical 
knowledge  of  botany  in  the  art  of  classifying  and  naming  many  of  our  common 
Eastern  flowering  plants. 
Such  works,  when  properly  presented,  are  of  great  benefit.  They  appeal  to 
persons  who  are  interested  in  flowers,  but  who  are  deterred  fiom  taking  up  the 
study  of  botany  on  account  of  the  dreaded  "technical  names"  which  in  such 
cases  are  administered  in  a  palatable  form. 
It  is  a  matter  of  great  regret  that  a  book  indicating  such  a  large  amount  of 
painstaking  work  on  the  part  of  the  author,  and  representing  such  a  hiph 
degree  of  typographical  skill,  should  be  marred  by  so  many  inaccuracies  in  the 
illustrations  which  accompany  the  descriptions  of  many  of  the  plants. 
Written  descriptions  are  often  ambiguous  because  of  their  great  latitude  ;  but 
in  illustrating  a  plant  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  persons  receiving 
instruction  are  apt  to  look  upon  a  cut  as  an  absolute  likeness  of  the  plant, 
whereas,  in  many  cases,  a  dozen  illustrations  would  be  necessary  to  give  an  idea 
of  the  variety  of  forms  assumed  by  a  single  species  under  varying  conditions. 
In  the  present  work  some  of  the  cuts  are  not  of  typical  forms,  but  of  abnor- 
mal species,  being  probably  taken  from  a  single  herbarium  spec'men  in  many 
instances.  The  illustrations  of  spearmint,  on  page  19,  and  bugleweed,  on  page 
71,  might  be  transposed  to  advantage,  as  neither  is  correct,  while  an  inter- 
change would  be  an  improvement  upon  accuracy. 
