Strong Drink and Tobacco Smoke. By H. P. Prescott. (Macmillan.)
—This book does not attempt the task—about the most useless, by the way, of all human labours—of advising or dissuading from the use of the things of which it treats. If it has a practical object, it is to help us in discovering whether, when we drink or smoke, we are taking in what we wish to take, or what various knaves find it profitable to palm upon us. But it is in the main a scientific description of the growth, structure,
&c., of four plants, three of them entering into the manufacture of beer and whisky, namely, barley, hops, and yeast (we may venture the con- jecture that not all our readers will have been aware that yeast is a plant), the tobacco plant being the fourth. By way of illustrations, there are some excellent plates, from etchings executed by the author himself, mostly exhibiting the results of microscopical researches. We ought to say that the volume appears under the care of Professor Huxley, Mr. Prescott having been carried off by consumption while it was passing through the press.
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