Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  I 
December,  1915.  J 
Book  Reviews. 
57i 
Director  of  the  Microscopical  Laboratory,  in  the  Philadelphia  Col- 
lege of  Pharmacy;  Member  of  the  Executive  Committee  of  Revision 
of  the  Pharmacopoeia  of  the  United  States  of  America;  Correspond- 
ing member  of  the  Societe  de  Pharmacie  de  Paris,  etc.  Illustrated 
with  over  300  plates,  comprising  about  1000  figures.  Published  by 
the  author,  145  North  Tenth  Street,  Philadelphia. 
Drug  analysts  and  others  interested  in  the  collection  and  com- 
mercial distribution  of  the  vegetable  drugs  have  long  felt  the  need 
of  an  authoritative  work  on  Pharmacognosy,  particularly  one  which 
would  embrace  the  largely-used  non-official  drugs.  Many  of  the 
latter  are  in  as  great,  or  greater,  demand  than  some  of  those  recog- 
nized by  the  Pharmacopoeia.  The  necessity  for  such  a  work  as  the 
book  in  hand  will  be  apparent  to  all  concerned. 
In  recent  years  greatly-increased  interest  in  Pharmacognosy  has 
been  shown.  The  drug  collector  now  finds  it  advisable  to  obtain  the 
opinion  of  the  trained  pharmacognocist  before  collecting  on  an  ex- 
tensive scale.  Similarly  the  drug  merchant  and  the  manufacturing 
pharmacist  find  it  necessary  to  secure  the  opinion  of  the  pharma- 
cognocist before  making  purchases,  and  to  see  that  incoming  material 
is  right. 
It  is  essential  that  the  student  of  Pharmacognosy  should  possess 
a  working  knowledge  of  chemistry  and  of  botany,  especially  inner 
morphology.  The  latter  subject  is  covered  in  an  admirable  manner 
in  "  Applied  and  Economic  Botany,"  a  companion  book  to  the  pres- 
ent one  and  a  book  with  which  the  student  should  first  familiarize 
himself. 
It  is  obviously  impossible,  in  the  space  that  may  be  devoted  to  a 
review  of  this  kind,  to  more  than  outline  in  a  very  general  way  a  few 
of  the  many  excellent  features  of  the  book  before  us. 
This  book  of  some  850  pages  and  4000  titles  embraces  nearly  all 
of  the  largely-used  drugs  and  many  of  the  rarer  ones.  The  medi- 
cinal plants  are  grouped  according  to  the  Natural  System  of  Classifi- 
cation of  Engler  and  Prantl.  The  nomenclature  adopted  has  been 
largely  based  on  Engler  and  Prantl  and  the  Index  Kewensis,  or,  in 
the  case  of  plants  growing  in  the  United  States,  pn  Gray's  New 
Manual  of  Botany  as  revised  by  Robinson  and  Fernald. 
The  author  divides  the  plants  yielding  medicinal  products  into 
three  great  groups,  each  of  which  is  divided  into  two  important  sub- 
groups, as  follows :  Thallophytes,  embracing  Algae  and  Fungi ; 
Archegoniates,  embracing  Bryophytes  and  Pteridophytes ;  and  Sper- 
