The drugs of old times might be good, but it's true,
We discard them in favour of those that are new.

The salts and the senna have vanished, we fear,
As the poet has said, like the snows of last year;
And where is the mixture in boyhood we quaff'd,
That was known by the ominous name of Black Draught?
While Gregory's Powder has gone, we are told,
To the limbo of drugs that are worn out and old.

New fads and new fancies are reigning supreme,
And calomel one day will be but a dream;
While folks have asserted a chemist might toil
Through his shelves, and find out he had no castor oil;
While as to Infusions, they've long taken wings,
And they'd think you quite mad for prescribing such things.

The fashion to-day is a tincture so strong,
That, if dosing yourself, you are sure to go wrong.
What men learnt in the past they say brings them no pelf,
And the well-tried old remedies rest on the shelf.
But the patient may haply exclaim, "Don't be rash,
Lest your new-fangled physic should settle my hash!"

* * * * *

"TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE STAR!"--Professor JOHN TYNDALL wrote to T.W.
RUSSELL last week commencing:--"Here, in the Alps, at the height of
more than 7,000 feet above the sea, have I read your letter to the
_Times_ on 'the War in Tipperary.'" Prodigious! "7,000 feet" up in the