<£Mtoriat SJepartmcnt. 
Our Journal. — In presenting the present number to our readers we take 
occasion to remind them of our promise in the last one, to enlarge the future 
issue. It will be seen that the page has been increased in dimensions 
without rendering it necessary to alter the size of the binding. The Varieties 
have been set in smaller type, and the whole typography made more com- 
pact. 
Several original articles intended for this number were not received in 
time for insertion, but will appear in our next. 
We have received several specimens of the wood, bark, leaves, and 
fruit of the Sassy bark" tree of Western Africa, from Dr. McGill of Cape 
Palmas through the kindness of Moses Sheppard, Esq., of Baltimore, and hope 
to be able to present the results of the examination, to which we are now 
submitting the bark, to our readers in the next issue. 
We will be glad to receive from any of our Cincinnati friends an account 
of the progress of their College of Pharmacy ; and also information respecting 
the cultivation of Peppermint and the distillation of its volatile oil ; as con- 
ducted in Ohio., . 
We will feel indebted to any of our readers in St. Louis, for information 
relative to the castor oil culture manufacture and trade as conducted in Illinois 
and other parts of thai section of country. 
College of Pharmacy at Boston. — We learn through the Medical and 
Surgical Journal of Boston, that the Apothecaries of that city have taken 
steps preliminary to the institution of a College of Pharmacy. It appears 
that the recent prosecution of Mr. Wakefield for an error in compounding a 
prescription, has awakened both professions to the necessity of giving a 
more thorough education to the persons in whose hands the practice of 
pharmacy is, and will in future be placed. There are none of us but can learn 
something new daily, if an ordinary share of observation is extended to 
what is going on around us in the shop. The apothecary or chemist has an 
extensive field for the range of his perceptive faculties, and when these are 
on the alert errors should be " few and far between." It is the want of a pro- 
per training of these faculties with a view to his daily duties, based on the 
knowledge acquired by the study of good books, illustrated by his preceptor 
or the lecturer, that gives rise to the numerous illy qualified apothecaries, 
even in our large cities, If a boy is placed with a master carpenter with a 
view to his becoming a proficient, he is expected meanwhile to be taught 
mensuratioi. draughting, and other theoretical and practical studies, unless 
he has previously learned them, and without which he would continue 
always a journeyman — a mere automaton. It is the union of the rules of 
