Am'o?t.yi£7arm'}     British  Pharmaceutical  Conference.  517 
agreed  to  unanimously  without  discussion.  It  is  not  probable  that  any  use- 
ful purpose  would  have  been  served  by  an  impromptu  discussion  of  the 
work  of  the  formulary  committee,  whilst  it  might  have  involved  a  consider- 
able loss  of  time ;  but  probably  few  who  took  part  in  the  vote  quite  realized 
that  they  were  sanctioning  the  publication  of  a  draft  they  had  not  yet  seen 
as  the  first  edition  of  the  Unofficial  Formulary.  This,  however,  was  the 
subsequent  ruling  of  the  president. 
Immediately  after  the  adoption  of  the  report  the  president  brought  be- 
fore the  members  a  suggestion  that  as  the  German  Apotheker-Verein  was 
then  holding  its  annual  meeting  in  Munich,  a  telegram  of  friendly  con- 
gratulations from  the  Conference  should  be  forwarded  to  that  body.  The 
suggestion  was  at  once  adopted  with  acclamation. 
The  way  was  now  cleared  for  the  presidential  address,  and  that  it  proved 
to  be  an  unusually  eloquent  oration  will,  with  those  who  are  acquainted 
with  Mr.  Atkins'  powers,  va  sans  dire.  The  dominant  theme  was  suggested, 
as  in  innumerable  other  cases  during  the  present  year,  by  the  "  Jubilee." 
Fifty  years  of  history  in  social  life,  in  scientific  progress,  in  craft  organiza- 
tion !  The  field  was  not  a  narrow  one,  and  time  allowed  only  for  the  pluck- 
ing of  a  handful  here  and  there,  certainly  not  for  anything  like  a  complete 
reaping.  Manchester  was  appropriately  chosen  to  illustrate  the  advance  in 
social  life.  The  score  of  express  trains  running  daily  between  that  city  and 
the  metropolis  that  have  grown  out  of  the  tentative  period  of  railway  loco- 
motion ;  the  increase  in  the  traffic  between  Liverpool  and  Manchester, 
which  promises  to  bring  to  the  inland  city  the  privileges  of  a  sea-port ;  the 
development  of  the  industries  that  have  made  Manchester  a  household 
word  througout  the  world;  and  last,  but  not  least,  the  increasing  love  for 
education,  literary,  technical  and  artistic,  which  has  culminated  in  the  Vic- 
toria University  and  the  Exhibition  at  Old  Trafford  ;  all  these  were  briefly 
mentioned.  The  speaker  next  invited  his  audience  to  follow  him  in  a  brief 
review  of  the  Victoria  era,  as  it  more  especially  affected  them  as  pharma- 
cists, and  he  chose  for  his  first  topics  the  half  century  of  chemistry  and 
botany.  But  it  must  be  confessed  that  this  portion  of  the  review  was  some- 
what meagre,  notwithstanding  that  it  antedated  the  Victoria  era  consider- 
ably. Such  a  text  indeed  would  have  sufficed  for  many  sermons  and  was 
decidedly  too  unwieldy  to  be  moulded  into  a  division  of  one.  The  president 
was  more  fortunate  when  he  turned  to  another  topic,  the  part  played  by  the 
Pharmaceutical  Society  of  Great  Britain  since  its  establishment  in  1841. 
"The  story  has  been  well  told,"  he  said,  "but  I  feel  deeply,  and  at  times 
sorrowfully,  that  it  has  not  received  the  recognition  it  deserves."  Emphati- 
cally, however,  he  insisted  that  disinterestedness  was  the  prominent  char- 
acteristic of  those  metropolitan  pharmacists  who  headed  the  new  move- 
ment ;  possibly,  had  he  not  himself  have  been  so  intimately  mixed  up  with 
its  more  recent  history,  he  might  have  applied  the  same  epithet  to  those 
who  still  lead  it  on.  A  panegyric  followed  of  the  earlier  leaders — Jacob  Bell, 
Allen,  Payne,  Savory,  Morson,  and  Dinneford,  not  omitting  the  still  living 
Thomas  Hyde  Hills  and  George  Webb  Sandford — and  then  the  speaker  pro- 
ceeded to  consider  how  far  the  ostensible  objects  of  the  organization — educa- 
