The Origins of The Canterbury Convocation

In the current standard text-book of English Church Law appear the following statements about the origin of Convocation: ‘The Convocation, in its origin, was for the purpose of taxation and no other; it was altogether unlike the Convocation of the foreign synods, which were composed solely of the bishops, collected to declare what was the doctrine, or what should be the discipline, of the Church. It is easy, however, to conceive how the clergy, when once convoked, gradually assumed the same power as existed in those foreign synods to which their Convocation might appear to bear some analogy.’ In examining this quotation we must consider, (a) the composition of the foreign synods; (b) their relation if any to the English Convocation; (c) the taxing functions of both bodies.

A Manual of Pharmacology—and Its Applications to Therapeutics and Toxicology

A new edition of this standard text book after six years is most welcome. The author has presented a change throughout in keeping with advances made in this field. These changes have been extensive, and the revisions have been adequate to cover them all. The format of the new edition features a double column page to facilitate reading. The author is Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology and Materia Medica, School of Medicine, Western Reverse University. Changes in the United State Pharmacopoeia, 13th revision, are included in the text. The book continues to be an essential reference book.

Non-Euclidean Geometry

About 2200 years ago there was published in Greek one of the most remarkable books of all times, Euclid's “Elements of Geometry”. It contains a systematic exposition of the leading propositions of elementary geometry and the elementary theory of numbers. It was at once adopted by the Greeks as the standard text book on pure mathematics. The parts that relate to elementary geometry were the standard text book for centuries and are still in use in England to-day. The English school boy does not say “Geometry”, he says “Euclid”. On the Continent of Europe “Euclid” was superseded by Legendre's “Elements of Geometry”, the first edition of which was published in 1794. A translation into English by a man named Davies was widely used in this country. (It was used at Columbia University as late as 1905). But that has been superseded by more modern American texts of which there is now a large number.