the intricacies of this labyrinth of errors, is led to suppose that he has before him an immense array of solid results, from which the errors have been sifted and winnowed by a threefold process of analysis; the fact being, on the other hand, that the truth and error submitted ultimately to his judgment, stand to each other in nearly the same relation as Falstaff's "pennyworth of bread" to his "monstrous quantity of sack," or (shall we say) in the same proportion as the active (?) ingredients in a globule of arnica (30) to the saccharum lactis. In other words, Dr Henderson, affecting to quote Bayle, treats us to some homoeopathic pickings out of Bayle by Dr Black; the "Homoeopathic Journal" being, of course, quite clear that this proceeding is all right; in fact, that Black is white, and Henderson too. The proceeding of Dr Black is as follows: he first pumps away at honest Bayle till he has pretty nearly exhausted all the colouring matter dissolved in the Frenchman's work, and then leaves behind the dry facts, as a caput mortuum for those who will take the trouble to analyse them. Honest Bayle, again, labours in his vocation to clarify his muddy German sources as only a Frenchman would ever think of doing; and the straggling and sprawling heroes of "Hufeland's Journal" turn out smooth-tongued and rotund in their testimony to belladonna, just as their proper names are insensibly melted down into forms agreeable to the eye of the French printers' devils, but scarcely recognisable under a Teutonic sky. When we think of the very washy and stupid twaddle about which all this pother has arisen, we confess we begin to feel ashamed of medical literature. The story of belladonna is, by its turnings and windings, so irresistibly suggestive of the veracious and instructive narrative of the "House that Jack Built," that we trust we shall not be considered to sink below the dignity of the occasion in producing the following lines from the pen of a witty friend :

"Here's a Professor, professing to tell

What Bayle has said, while he knows full well,
That never a line of Bayle did he see.

Thus Henderson cribs out of Black, while B.

And H. together, sooth to say,

Have treated old Bayle in a scurvy way.

"And here's old Bayle, a blundering goose,
By Black and Henderson turned to use-
Trying to see through Germans dim,
And to turn them out à la Francais, trim
As gay flaneurs on a holiday,

All on the Boulevard so gay.

"And here's a noble German-so dim!
Never a Frenchman can see through him!
Sitting alone, with thought so free,
On the egg of a grand discovery,

Which came, itmust be at once confessed,

Out of that very great mare's nest,"

The Castle in the Air that Hahnemann Built.

To be serious, we believe it impossible to present a better instance than the story of belladonna, of the manner in which errors are propagated, discreditable to the literature of our profession. Taking this tortuous history as a whole, we may picture for ourselves a genealogical tree of blunders, of which the trunk may appropriately be represented by Masius, Gumpert, Berndt, and other German physicians, of whom, without meaning anything disrespectful, we affirm, that they were loose observers; the larger branches by Monsieur Bayle, an honest, we believe, but very faulty translator, the small branches by Dr Black, and the minute twigs, by Professor Henderson, whose verdant foliage is displayed under the cover of "Homœopathy fairly Represented," and of whom we shall only say, that he manifests an unquestionable and vigorous vitality in assimilating and elaborating the crude juices presented to him by his predecessors. But the tree is known by its fruit ; and we trust we have been successful in showing our readers the worthless, if not poisonous, character of its produce in this instance. And so, for our parts, we wash our hands of the matter.

A Manual of Botany, being an Introduction to the Study of the Structure, Physiology and Classification of Plants. By JOHN HUTTON BALFOUR, M.D., etc. Third Edition, revised and enlarged, by JOSEPH WILLIAMS, M.D., Lecturer on Botany, Original School of Medicine, Dublin. London and Glasgow: Griffin and Company. 1855.

SUCH of our readers as take any interest in botanical books are aware that, in 1849, Professor Balfour put forth an elementary work entitled "Manual of Botany," which was published by the Messrs Griffin of Glasgow. Somehow or other, the author and his publishers did not pull well together, and consequently when, in 1851, a new edition was called for, Dr Balfour declined having anything further to do with this manual, and betaking himself to another publisher, produced a new and much improved work under the title of "Class Book of Botany." It is no business of ours to inquire who was right or wrong in this controversy, suffice it to say, that the copyright of the manual remained with the Messrs Griffin, and the book now before us is a third edition thereof. Of course it is not only the right but the business of Messrs Griffin to turn their literary property to the best account. In one respect this third edition is an improvement on the second, for we have on the title-page this time the name of an actual personage acting as editor (at least, Dr Williams has specific characters assigned to him, from which we infer that he is not a myth), and therefore we know with whom we have to deal in judging of the merits of this particular edition. We fear, that in the present case we have to do with an editor who has very loose notions as to the responsibilities of his

vocation. The qualifications required for rightly editing a work are first, sufficient acquaintance with the subject to enable the editor to bring the work up to the actual state of science; and secondly, a sufficient amount of diligence and care to enable him to exclude, as far as possible, typographical errors, which are always doubly to be reprehended in books abounding in scientific and technical terms. In both these respects Dr Williams seems to us to be far from up to the mark. We fail to discover any additions to the body of the work, of those novelties which the progress of botanical science has made known to us since the appearance of the first edition of this book. Thus, at page 450, under the important subject of the Cinchonacea, we find the following:

"Yellow bark China-regia, or Calisaya bark, partly flat, partly quilled, procured from Cinchona, Calisaya, which grows around Apolobamba.

We were at first disposed to think that this involved merely an error of punctuation, arising from the same carelessness, which, in the line above, has called Cinchona micrantha C. micranha, but that it is something more than this, is evident from the tabular view of the Cinchona barks given lower down in the same page, where we find—

"Royal, Yellow or Calisaya bark. . . . Cinchona sp.?"

The fact seems to be, that the editor has used the word Calisaya, in the first sentence quoted by us, not as the name of a species, but of a locality, for it is not printed in italics, as all the other names of species are in the same passage, and thus, in giving the tabular view below, he has merely reprinted it from the first edition, thus totally ignoring Weddell's discovery of the true species yielding the Calisaya bark-a species which has not only been, for some time, in cultivation in the botanic gardens of this country, but has actually been sent alive from this country to India, so that possibly, future generations of aguish Britons may be cured by quinine from Cinchonas grown on the slopes of the Himalayas. There thus does not seem to have been any trouble taken to keep this edition au courant du jour, and as small pains have been bestowed in purging it from old errors, or keeping it free from new. Errors in spelling are of constant occurrence. In page 2 molluscous is written moluscous, in page 3 areolar, areoler; in page 8 primordial, primordeal; nor does the spelling improve as we get on, for at page 670 the amnios is said to be a "gellationous liquor." The liquor is an I too long-the molluscs an I too short-let them have measure for measure in next edition.

With these statements before him, the reader may ask in what respect this edition is entitled to be said on the title-page to be revised and enlarged; we cannot say that we find much evidence of revision, but we at once admit enlargement to the extent of nearly 80 pages. This is chiefly in the form of a glossary, the idea of adding which probably was derived from Dr Balfour's Class Book. It is not stated that this is solely editorial, and not part of Dr Balfour's original work, but assuredly this ought to have been done, that the

merit of it may be assigned to the editor and not to Dr Balfour, who has not the slightest connection with it, and this all the more that there are very few of the items in this glossary which are not either incorrect, or unintelligible, or both, as the following example will show:

"ASCENDANT. Stems united at the base are said to be ascendant. In the case of other plants, when the stems are procumbent naturally and only rise in their upper part-Er. Polygonum persicaria. The filaments of the four long stamens of the Cruciferae are ascendant, the filaments of the two short stamens on the same are straight."

Of the four sentences of which this passage consists, the first and fourth are simple nonsense; the second is not English, and is unintelligible; the third contains only two and a half words, and one of these misprinted, for persicaria ought to have a capital P.

The glossary is not the sole source of the enlargement of the present edition; there are some hints for botanical excursions and a philosophical peroration, which are so curious that we cannot resist the pleasure of quoting some passages from them—

"Anything of a more immediate personal nature must be contained in a small portable carpet bag, which must, at the same time, contain a small tin flagon of alcohol, and other articles necessary for the gathering, preparation, and study of the plants." P. 666.

We have botanised a little in our day, and have managed to scrape together a tolerably large herbarium, but have never found alcohol necessary either for gathering, preparing, or studying, plants. We learn from certain instructions on a preceding page, that if any "of the specimens disclose moisture, all the parts must be touched lightly with a hair pencil dipped in alcohol." But, setting aside for the present all questioning as to whether this treatment would or would not remove moisture, it is applied by our editor only to plants already in the herbarium-which, by the way, he calls a "local," and says ought to be well aërated-as if a herbarium were a bottle of soda water-but let that pass. It is quite clear that this application of the alcohol can hardly be intended to be made during an ordinary botanical excursion, and with recently gathered plants. We can only, therefore, imagine the other alternative, that by the flagon of alcohol our editor means a flask of potheen for internal use —not spirit. rectific. for external application to the plants. If so, we submit that Britannia metal is better than tin, unless, to be sure, the botanist be rich and can afford silver and farther, than for such a purpose he had better have the flask or flagon in one of the receptacles of his jacket, than in his carpet bag. But our advice to the young botanist rather is-away with all Dutch, or Prussian, or Russian courage-he is a poor botanist who could not get to the top of Saddleback, or Macgillicuddy Reeks, or even noble Ben-namuighdui, without the aid of alcohol, and therefore we protest against this fluid being necessary either for gathering, preparing, or studying, plants. To do the editor justice, however, he seems to

have eventually come to the conclusion that a milder liquid than alcohol would be a safer companion during a botanical ramble, for waxing classical in the peroration which we have mentioned, he gives us the following parting words "Ergo vale, lector amice: sylvas ruraque lacte peragra, et scientiam amabilem auge." Probably, however, the word which we have italicised is only a careless misprint for laete, and our satisfaction at finding that the editor has become a convert to abstinence practices, may, after all, be only an example of misplaced confidence.

We have mentioned a certain philosophical peroration-lest any of our readers should pine in ignorance, we transcribe a portion of it— "Cui Bono? Conclusion.

"How to reply to this question so often repeated by persons strangers to the studies and pleasures of the botanist? How will you be enabled to estimate the satisfaction which the mind experiences in the research and discovery of a natural law, and in the contemplation of the wonders of nature? Will you speak of the inexhaustible and veritable happiness which to the naturalist replaces ordinary pleasures, and of that real beauty which he knows well to discriminate from conventional beauty? Of the sentiment of admiration with which he views the elegant bearing of the most common weed of our fields; the most humble convolvulus for example, encircling, with its spiral blossoms, the flexible stem of a grass, which he prefers to the comparatively best fabrics or articles decorated, as they generally are, with representations of the vegetable world, so incorrect and often ridiculous? Of the pearls and diamonds of the rose which sparkle on the leaves under the influence of the sun's first rays, and of which the effect appears to him in no wise inferior to the lustre of the most precious gems? The interrogator little affected by the beauty of plants, and who has never thought of them in any other point of view than that of alimentary consumption, would look at you with astonishment, and the more benevolent be scarcely able to repress a smile." P. 667.

We would fain quote more of this fine writing, but we have been seized with a feeling of horror at the idea of the existence of such a graminivorous monster as could look upon a convolvulus with a view to its "alimentary consumption," and are compelled to lay down our pen-merely in conclusion reminding our readers that neither the state of science nor the style of writing English in Edinburgh, are to be in any way identified with this edition of Dr Balfour's Manual.

Part Third.

PERISCOPE.

MIDWIFERY.

CASES OF CESAREAN SECTION.

Two cases of Cæsarean section, worthy of attention, from their different ebaracters, have been performed during the month of January last, in the Atal des Cliniques, at Paris, by Professor Paul Dubois.