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ON  PHARMACEUTICAL  HERBARIA.  335 
they  are,  that  I  venture  now  to  advocate.    I  wish  rather  to  point 
out  the  advantage  to  the  student  of  being  able  to  consult  a 
small  collection  of  medicinal  plants  preserved  in  herbarium- 
form,  and  to  draw  attention  to  the  ease  with  which  such  a  collec- 
tion may  be  formed.    One  of  the  regulations  imposed  by  a 
paternal  but  despotic  government  on  the  continental  apothecary 
is  that  he  shall  provide  and  maintain  in  good  order  for  the  use 
of  his  apprentices,  an  herbarium  of  medicinal  plants.    Let  us 
draw  a  lesson  from  this.    In  the  British  Pharmacopoeia  about 
170  plants  are  enumerated  as  furnishing  the  vegetable  Materia 
Medica  prescribed  in  that  work  ;  and  of  this  number  more  than 
50  are  either  indigenous  to  or  are  cultivated  in  Great  Britain. 
An  herbarium  comprising  even  four-fifths  of  this  number  would 
be  no  unimportant  aid  to  the  student  who  was  "reading  up  "  a 
subject  so  uninviting  to  most  as  Materia  Medica.    I  would  not 
however  restrict  my  herbarium  to  the  plants  of  the  pharma- 
copoeia.   There  is  a  considerable  number  that  are  used  in  rustic 
medicine,  some  of  which  were  held  officinal  by  the  London 
College  of  Physicians  but  a  few  years  back.    As  instances  of 
this,  let  me  enumerate  Woodsorrel,  Sweet  Flag,  Grarlick,  Marsh 
Mallow,  Asarabacca,  Bistort,  Bitter  Cress,  Lesser  Centaury, 
Quince,  Carrot,  Black  Hellebore,  Elecampane,  Lettuce,  Bay, 
Common  Mallow,  Horehound,  Pennyroyal,  Wormwood,  Buck- 
bean,  Tormentilla,  and  Coltsfoot.    To  this  number  may  be 
added  with  advantage  certain  plants  which  are  interesting  to 
the  pharmaceutist  from  their  liability  to  be  confounded  with 
others  that  are  officinal,  as  Pyrethrum  and  Matricaria,  which 
may  be  mistaken  for  Chamomile,  Fool's  Parsley,  supposed  some- 
times to  do  duty  for  Conium,  Hawkbit  and  Rhamnus  Frangula, 
which  it  is  said  have  been  passed  off  for  Dandelion  and  Buck- 
thorn. 
As  to  exotic  medicinal  plants,  the  difficulty  of  obtaining 
specimens  would,  I  must  admit,  be  far  greater  and  the  pharma- 
ceutical herbarium  must  inevitably  contain  many  blanks.  Still 
as  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  numbers  over  40  members  resi- 
dent in  foreign  countries,  it  would  not,  I  believe,  be  impossible 
to  interest  some  of  them  in  procuring  and  forwarding  to  our 
secretary  specimens  for  distribution  of  some  of  the  commoner 
