been decomposed by sodium, and the oil again rectified, a second analysis was made which proved it isomeric with oil of turpentine.

A genuine grass oil from Khandesh, derived as we suppose from the same species, which was examined by one of us (F.), yielded nothing crystalline when saturated with dry hydrochloric acid; but when the liquid was afterwards treated with fuming nitric acid, crystals of the compound, C10H16, HCl, sublimed into the upper part of the vessel. We have observed that the oils both of lemon grass and citronella yield solid compounds, if shaken with a saturated solution of bisulphite of sodium.

Citronella oil was found by Gladstone (1872) to be composed chiefly of an oxidized oil, which he called Citronellol, and which he separated by fractional distillation into two portions, the one boiling at 202-205° C., the other 199-202° C. The composition of each portion is indicated by the formula CH16O.

Wright's researches (1874) tend rather to show the prevailing part of citronella oil to consist of the liquid CHO, boiling near 210°, which he calls Citronellol. It unites with bromine, and the resulting compound, upon heating, breaks up according to the following equation:

C10H180Br2 = OH2 2 HBr. C1oH14.

Cymene.

Commerce-The growing trade in grass oil is exemplified in a striking manner by the following statistics. The export of Citronella Oil from Ceylon in 1864 was 622,000 ounces, valued at £8230. In the Ceylon Blue Book, the exports for 1872 are returned thus:

In 1875 the oil shipped from Ceylon to the United Kingdom was valued at 42,871 rupees, that sent to other foreign countries at 45,871 rupees, to British possessions 660 rupees (one rupee equal to about 28).

Oil of Lemon Grass, which is a more costly article and less extensively produced, was exported from Ceylon during the same year to the extent of 13,515 ounces, more than half of which quantity was shipped to the United States. There are no analogous statistics for these two oils from Singapore, where, as stated at p. 726, they are now largely manufactured.

By the official Report on the External Commerce of Bombay, published in 1867, we find that during the year ending 31 March, 1867, Grass Oil [i.e. Ginger-grass or Rusa Oil] was exported thence to the amount of 41,643 lb. This oil is shipped to England and to the ports of the

Red Sea.

Uses-Grass oils are much esteemed in India as an external application in rheumatism. Rúsa oil is said to stimulate the growth of the hair. Internally, grass oil is sometimes administered as a carminative in colic; and an infusion of the leaves of lemon grass is prescribed as a diaphoretic and stimulant. In Europe and America the oils are used almost exclusively by the soapmakers and perfumers.2

1 In addition to which, there were "842 dozens and 33 packages" of the same oil shipped to the United States. One ounce equal to 311 grammes.

The foliage of the large odoriferous

species of Andropogon is used in India for thatching. It is eaten voraciously by cattle, whose flesh and milk become flavoured with its strong aroma.

But the most remarkable use made of any grass oil is that for adulterating Attar of Rose in European Turkey. The oil thus employed is that of Andropogon Schoenanthus L. (see p. 725); and it is a curious fact that its Hindustani name is closely similar in sound to the word rose. Thus under the designation Rusa, Rowsah, Rosa, Rosé, Roshe1 it is exported in large quantities from Bombay to the ports of Arabia, probably chiefly to Jidda, whence it is carried to Turkey by the Mahommedan pilgrims. In Arabia and Turkey, it appears under the name Idris yaghi, while in the attar-producing districts of the Balkan it is known, at least to Europeans, as Geranium Oil or Palmarosa Oil. Before being mixed with attar, the oil is subjected to a certain preparation, which is accomplished by shaking it with water acidulated with lemon juice, and then exposing it to the sun and air. By this process, described by Baur,2 the oil loses a penetrating after-smell, and acquires a pale straw colour. The optical and chemical differences between grass oil thus refined and attar of rose are slight and do not indicate a small admixture of the former. If grass oil is added largely to attar, it will prevent its congealing.

Adulteration-The grass oil prepared by the natives of India is not unfrequently contaminated with fatty oil.

Other Products of the genus Andropogon.

Herba Schoenanthi vel Squinanthi, Juncus odoratus, Fænum Camelorum.

The drug bearing these names has had a place in pharmacy from the days of Dioscorides down to the middle of the last century, and is still met with in the East. The plant which affords it, formerly confounded with other species, is now known to be Andropogon laniger Desf., a grass of wide distribution, growing in hot dry regions in Northern Africa (Algeria), Arabia, and North-western India, reaching Thibet, where it is found up to an elevation of 11,000 feet. Mr. Tolbort has sent us specimens under the name of Kháví, gathered by himself in 1869 between Multan and Kot Sultán, and quite agreeing with the drug of pharmacy. The grass has an aromatic pungent taste, which is retained in very old specimens. We are not aware that it is distilled for essential oil.

Cuscus or Vetti-ver-This is the long fibrous root of Andropogon muricatus Retz, a large grass found abundantly in rich moist ground in Southern India and Bengal. Inscriptions on copper-plates lately discovered in the district of Etawah, south-east of Agra, and dating from A.D. 1103 and 1174, record grants of villages to Brahmins by the kings of Kanauj, and enumerate the imposts that were to be levied. These include taxes on mines, salt pits and the trade in precious metals, also on mahwah (Bassia) and mango trees, and on Cuscus Grass.*

Cuscus, which appears occasionally in the London drug sales, is used in England for laying in drawers as a perfume. In India it serves for

making tatties or screens, which are placed in windows and doorways, and when wetted, diffuse an agreeable odour and coolness. It is also used for making ornamental baskets and many small articles, and has some reputation as a medicine.

RHIZOMA GRAMINIS.

Radix Graminis; Couch Grass, Quitch Grass, Dog's Grass; F. Chiendent commun ou Petit Chiendent; G. Queckenwurzel, Graswurzel.

Botanical Origin-Agropyrum repens P. Beauv. (Triticum repens L.), a widely diffused weed, growing in fields and waste places in all parts of Europe, in Northern Asia down to the region south of the Caspian, also in North America; and in South America to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.

History The ancients were familiar with a grass termed "Aypworts and Gramen, having a creeping rootstock like that under notice. It is impossible to determine to what species the plant is referable, though it is probable that the grass Cynodon Dactylon Pers., as well as Agropyrum repens, was included under these names.

4

Dioscorides asserts that its root taken in the form of decoction, is a useful remedy in suppression of urine and vesical calculus. The same statements are made by Pliny; and again occur in the writings of Oribasius' and Marcellus Empiricus in the 4th, and of Aëtius in the 6th century, and are repeated in the medieval herbals, where also figures of the plant may be found, as for instance in Dodonæus. The drug is also met with in the German pharmaceutical tariffs of the 16th century. Turner and Gerarde both ascribe to a decoction of grass root diuretic and lithontriptic virtues. The drug is still a domestic remedy in great repute in France, being taken as a demulcent and sudorific in the form of tisane.

Description-Couch-grass has a long, stiff, pale yellow, smooth rhizome, of an inch in diameter, creeping close under the surface of the ground, occasionally branching, marked at intervals of about an inch by nodes, which bear slender branching roots and the remains of sheathing rudimentary leaves.

18

As found in the shops, the rhizome is always free from rootlets, cut into short lengths of to of an inch, and dried. It is thus in the form of little, shining, straw-coloured, many-edged, tubular pieces, which are without odour, but have a slightly sweet taste.

Microscopic Structure-A transverse section of this rhizome shows two different portions of tissue, separated by the so-called nucleus-sheath. The latter consists of an unbroken ring of prismatic cells, analogous to those occurring in sarsaparilla. In Rhizoma Graminis, the outer part of the tissue exhibits a diffuse circle of about 20 liber bundles, and the interior part about the same number of fibro-vascular bundles more

1 De virtute simplicium, cap. i. (Agrostis).

De medicamentis, cap. xxvi.

3 Tetrabibli primæ, sermo i.

As in the Herbarius Patavia printed in 1485, in which it is said of Gramen—“ aqua

decoctionis ejus. . . valet contra dissuriam

et frangit lapidem et curat vulnera vesicæ et provocat urinam . .

5 Herball, part 2, 1568. 13.

densely packed. The pith is reduced to a few rows of cells, the rhizome being always hollow, except at the nodes. No solid contents are to be met with in the tissue.

Chemical Composition-The constituents of couch-grass include no substance to which medicinal powers can be ascribed. The juice of the rhizome afforded to H. Müller1 about 3 per cent. of sugar, and 7 to 8 per cent. of Triticin, C12H22O11, a tasteless, amorphous, gummy substance, easily transformed into sugar if its concentrated solution is kept for a short time at 110° C. When treated with nitric acid, it yields oxalic acid. The rhizome affords also another gummy matter containing nitrogen, and quickly undergoing decomposition; the drug moreover is somewhat rich in acid malates. Mannite is probably occasionally present as in taraxacum (p. 394), for such is the inference we draw from the opposite results obtained by Stenhouse and by Völcker. Starch, pectin and resin are wanting. The rhizome leaves 4 per cent. of ash. Uses A decoction of the rhizome has of late been recommended in mucous discharge from the bladder.

Substitutes-Agropyrum acutum R. et S., A. pungens R. et S., and A. junceum P. Beauv., by some botanists regarded as mere maritime varieties of A. repens, have rootstocks perfectly similar to this latter.

Cynodon Dactylon Pers., a grass very common in the South of Europe and the warmer parts of Western Europe, also indigenous to Northern Africa as far as Sennaar and Abyssinia, affords the Gros Chiendent or Chiendent pied-de-poule of the French. It is a rhizome differing from that of couch-grass in being a little stouter. Under the microscope it displays an entirely different structure, inasmuch as it contains a large number of much stronger fibro-vascular bundles, and a cellular tissue loaded with starch, and is therefore in appearance much more woody. It thus approximates to the rhizome of Carex arenaria L., which is as much used in Germany as that of Cynodon in Southern Europe. The latter appears to contain Asparagin (the Cynodin of Semmola2), or a substance similar to it.

1 Archiv der Pharm. 203. (1873) 17.

2 Della Cinodina, nuovo prodotto organico, trovato nella gramigna officinale, Cynodon Dactylon.-Opere minori di Giovanni Sem

mola, Napoli, 1841.-Abstracted in the Jahresbericht of Berzelius, Tübingen, 1845.

535.

II.-CRYPTOGAMOUS OR FLOWERLESS PLANTS.

Dascular Cryptogams.

LYCOPODIACEÆ.

SPORÆ LYCOPODII.

Lycopodium; Semen vel Sporula Lycopodii; F. Lycopode;
G. Bärlappsamen, Hexenmehl.

Botanical Origin-Lycopodium clavatum L.-This plant, the Common Clubmoss, is almost cosmopolitan. It is found on hilly pastures and heaths throughout Central and Northern Europe from the Alps and Pyrenees to the Arctic reunions, in the mountains of the east and centre of Spain, throughout Russian Asia to Amurland and Japan, in North and South America, the Falkland Isles, Australia and the Cape of Good Hope. It occurs throughout Great Britain, but is most plentiful on the moors of the northern counties.

The part of the plant employed in pharmacy is the minute spores, which, as a yellow powder, are shaken out of the kidney-shaped capsules or sporangia, growing on the inner side of the bracts covering the fruit-spike.

The manner in which those sporæ are able to reproduce the mother plant is not yet satisfactorily ascertained.1

History The Common Clubmoss was well known as Muscus terrestris or Muscus clavatus, to the older botanists, as Tragus, Dodonæus, Tabernæmontanus, Bauhin, Parkinson and Ray, by most of whom its supposed virtues as a herb have been commemorated. Though the powder (spores) was officinal in Germany, and used as an application to wounds in the middle of the 17th century, it does not appear to have been known in the English shops until a comparatively recent period. It is not included by Dale3 in the list of drugs sold by London druggists in 1692, nor enumerated in English drug lists of the last century; and it never had a place in the London Pharmacopoeia.

1 The few particulars may be found in the excellent description of Lycopodium in Luerssen's "Medicinisch - pharmaceutische Botanik," i. (Leipzig, 1878) 635, with figures.

2 Schröder, Pharmacopoeia Medico-chymica, ed. 4, Lugd. 1656. 538.-Flückiger, "Documente" (quoted p. 404) 63. 68.

3 Pharmacologia, Lond. 1693.