to of an inch in thickness, translucent and horny, but brittle with a smooth and shining fracture. It is rather smoother on the inner surface and of lighter colour than on the outer.

The galls when broken are generally found to contain a white, downy-looking substance, together with the minute, dried-up bodies of the killed insect.1

The drug as imported from Japan is usually a little smaller and paler; it mostly fetches a better price in the market.

Microscopic Structure-The tissue of the galls is made up of thinwalled, large cells irregularly traversed by small vascular bundles and laticiferous vessels. The latter are mostly not branched. The parenchyme is loaded with lumps of tannic matter and starch, the latter having mostly lost by the treatment with boiling water its granular appearance. The epidermis of the galls is covered with little tapering hairs, consisting each of 1-5 cells, to which is due the velvety down of the drug.

Chemical Composition-Chinese or Japanese galls contain about 70 per cent. of a tannic acid, which has been first shown by Stein in 1849 to be identical with that derived from oak galls (see Gallæ halepenses), the so-called gallotannic or common tannic acid. It is remarkable that this substance, which is by no means widely distributed, is also present in Rhus coriaria, a species indigenous in the Mediterranean region. Its leaves and shoots are the well-known dyeing and tanning material Sumach.

Stein, however, pointed out at the same time, that in Chinese galls gallotannic acid is accompanied by a small amount, about 4 per cent., of a different tannic matter.

Commerce-At present the supplies arrive chiefly from Hankow, from which great trading city the export, in 1872, was no less than 30,949 peculs, equal to 36,844 cwt.; 21,611 peculs, value 136,214 taels (one tael about 68.) in 1874. In 1877 all China exported not more than 17,515 peculs. A little is also shipped from Canton and Ningpo.3 The quantity imported from China into the United Kingdom in 1872 was 8621 cwts., valued at £20,098. In the China trade returns, the drug is always miscalled "Nut galls," or "gallnuts." Only those called "Wupei-tze" are the galls under examination. There are also oak-galls exported from China resembling those from Western Asia. Japanese galls, "Kifushi," are shipped in increasing quantities at Hiogo.*

Uses The galls under notice are employed, chiefly in Germany, for the manufacture of tannic acid, gallic acid, and pyrogallol.

1 See also Schenk, in Buchner's Repertorium für Pharm. v. (1850) 26–27, or short abstract of that paper in the Jahresbericht of Wiggers, 1850. 48.

See also Stenhouse, Proceedings of the

Royal Society, xi. (1862) 402.

3 Returns of Trade at the Treaty Ports of China, for 1872. 154; for 1874.

4

Matsugata, Le Japon à l'Exposition universelle (Paris, 1878) 116. 146.

LEGUMINOSE.

HERBA SCOPARII.

Cucumina vel Summitates Scoparii; Broom Tops; F. Genét à balais; G. Besenginster, Pfriemenkraut.

Botanical Origin-Cytisus Scoparius Link (Spartium Scoparium L., Sarothamnus vulgaris Wimmer), the Common Broom, a woody shrub, 3 to 6 feet high, grows gregariously in sandy thickets and uncultivated places throughout Great Britain, and Western and temperate Northern Europe. In continental Europe it is plentiful in the valley of the Rhine up to the Swiss frontier, in Southern Germany and in Silesia, but does not ascend the Alps, and is absent from many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, Polonia for instance. According to Ledebour, it is found in Central and Southern Russia and on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains. In Southern Europe its place is supplied by other species.

History From the fact that this plant is chiefly a native of Western, Northern and Central Europe, it is improbable that the classical authors were acquainted with it; and for the same reason the remarks of the early Italian writers may not always apply to the species under notice. With this reservation, we may state that broom under the name Genista, Genesta, or Genestra is mentioned in the earliest printed herbals, as that of Passau,' 1485, the Hortus Sanitatis, 1491, the Great Herbal printed at Southwark in 1526, and others. It is likewise the Genista as figured and described by the German botanists and pharmacologists of the 16th century, like Brunfels, Fuchs, Tragus, Valerius Cordus ("Genista angulosa") and others. Broom was used in ancient Anglo-Saxon medicine as well as in the Welsh "Meddygon Myddvai." It had a place in the London Pharmacopoeia of 1618, and has been included in nearly every subsequent edition. Hieronymus Brunschwyg gives directions for distilling a water from the flowers, "flores genesta"-a medicine which Gerarde relates was used by King Henry VIII. "against surfets and diseases thereof arising.

3

Broom was the emblem of those of the Norman sovereigns of England descended from Geoffry the "Handsome," or "Plantagenet,' count of Anjou (obiit A.D. 1150), who was in the habit of wearing the common broom of his country, the “planta genista," in his helmet.

Description-The Common Broom has numerous straight ascending wiry branches, sharply 5-angled and devoid of spines. The leaves, of which the largest are barely an inch long, consist of 3 obovate leaflets on a petiole of their own length. Towards the extremities of the twigs, the leaves are much scattered and generally reduced to a single ovate leaflet, nearly sessile. The leaves when young are clothed on both sides with long reddish hairs; these under the microscope are seen each to

1 Herbarius, Patavie 1485.

2 Cockayne Leechdoms, &c., iii. (1866)

3 De arte distillandi, first edition 1500, Argentorati, cap. xv.

consist of a simple cylindrical thin-walled cell, the surface of which is beset with numerous extremely small protuberances.

The large, bright yellow, odorous flowers, which become brown in drying, are mostly solitary in the axils of the leaves; they have a persistent campanulate calyx divided into two lips minutely toothed, and a long subulate style, curved round on itself. The legume is oblong compressed, 1 to 2 inches long by about an inch wide, fringed with hairs along the edge. It contains 10 to 12 olive-coloured albuminous seeds, the funicle of which is expanded into a large fleshy strophiole. They have a bitterish taste, and are devoid of starch.

The portion of the plant used in pharmacy is the younger herbaceous branches, which are required both fresh and dried. In the former state they emit when bruised a peculiar odour which is lost in drying. They have a nauseous bitter taste.

Chemical Composition-Stenhouse' discovered in broom tops two interesting principles, Scoparin, CHO, an indifferent or somewhat acid body, and the alkaloid Sparteine, CHN, the first soluble in water or spirit and crystallizing in yellowish tufts, the second a colourless oily liquid heavier than water and sparingly soluble in it, boiling at 288° C.

To obtain scoparin, a watery decoction of the plant is concentrated so as to form a jelly after standing for a day or two. This is then washed with a small quantity of cold water, dissolved in hot water and again allowed to repose. By repeating this treatment with the addition of a little hydrochloric acid, the chlorophyll may at length be separated and the scoparin obtained as a gelatinous mass, which dries as an amorphous, brittle, pale yellow, neutral substance, devoid of taste and smell. Its solution in hot alcohol deposits it partly in crystals and partly as jelly, which after drying are alike in composition. Hlasiwetz showed (1866) that scoparin when melted with potash is resolved, like kino or quercetin, into Phloroglucin, CHO3, and Protocatechuic Acid,

2 C'H'O

The acid mother-liquors from which scoparin has been obtained when concentrated and distilled with soda, yield besides ammonia a very bitter oily liquid, Sparteine. To obtain it pure, it requires to be repeatedly rectified, dried by chloride of calcium, and distilled in a current of dry carbonic acid. It is colourless, but becomes brown by exposure to light; it has at first an odour of aniline, but this is altered by rectification. Sparteine has a decidedly alkaline reaction and readily neutralizes acids, forming crystallizable salts which are extremely bitter. Conine, nicotine, and sparteine are the only volatile alkaloids devoid of oxygen hitherto known to exist in the vegetable kingdom.

Mills' extracted sparteine simply by acidulated water which he concentrated and then distilled with soda. The distillate was then saturated with hydrochloric acid, evaporated to dryness, and submitted to distillation with potash. The oily sparteine thus obtained was dried by prolonged heating with sodium in a current of hydrogen, and finally rectified per se. Mills succeeded in replacing one or two equivalents of the hydrogen of sparteine by one or two of CH (ethyl). From 150 lb.

1 Phil. Trans. 1851. 422-431.

2 Journ. of Chem. Soc. xv. (1862) 1.; Gmelin's Chem. xvi. (1864) 282.

of the (dried?) plant, he obtained 22 cubic centimetres (f3vj.) of sparteine, which we may estimate as equivalent to about per mille.

Stenhouse ascertained that the amount of sparteine and scoparin depends much on external conditions, broom grown in the shade yielding less than that produced in open sunny places. He states that shepherds are well aware of the shrub possessing narcotic properties, from having observed their sheep to become stupified and excited when occasionally compelled to eat it.

The experiments of Reinsch (1846) tend to show that broom contains a bitter crystallizible principle in addition to the foregoing. The seeds of the allied Cytisus Laburnum L. afford two highly poisonous alkaloids, Cytisine and Laburnine, discovered by A. Husemann and Marmé in 1865.

Uses A decoction of broom tops, made from the dried herb, is used as a diuretic and purgative. The juice of the fresh plant, preserved by the addition of alcohol, is also administered and is regarded as a very efficient preparation.

SEMEN FŒNI GRÆCI.

Semen Fenugræci; Fenugreek; F. Semences de Fenugrec; G. Bockshornsamen.

Botanical Origin-Trigonella Fonum græcum L., au erect, subglabrous, annual plant, 1 to 2 feet high, with solitary, subsessile, whitish flowers; indigenous to the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, in which it has been long cultivated, and whence it appears to have spread to India.

History-In the old Egyptian preparation Kyphi, an ingredient 'Sebes or Sebtu" is mentioned, which is thought by Ebers to mean fenugreek. This plant was well known to the Roman writers on husbandry, as Porcius Cato (B.C. 234-149) who calls it Fænum Græcum and directs it to be sown as fodder for oxen. It is the Tλs of Dioscorides and other Greek writers. Its mucilaginous seeds, "siliquæ" of the Roman peasants, were valued as an aliment and condiment for man, and as such are still largely consumed in the East. They were likewise supposed to possess many medicinal virtues, and had a place in the pharmacopoeias of the last century.

The cultivation of fenugreek in Central Europe was encouraged by Charlemagne (A.D. 812), and the plant was grown in English gardens in the 16th century.

Description-The fenugreek plant has a sickle-shaped pod, 3 to 4 inches long, containing 10 to 20 hard, brownish-yellow seeds, having the smell and taste which is characteristic of peas and beans, with addition of a cumarin- or melilot-flavour.

The seeds are about of an inch long, with a rhomboid outline, often shrivelled and distorted; they are somewhat compressed, with the hilum on the sharper edge, and a deep furrow running from it and almost dividing the seed into two unequal lobes. When the seed is macerated in warm water, its structure becomes easily visible.

The

testa bursts by the swelling of the internal membrane or endopleura, which like a thick gelatinous sac encloses the cotyledons and their very large hooked radicle.

Microscopic Structure-The most interesting structural peculiarity of this seed arises from the fact that the mucilage with which it abounds is not yielded by the cells of the epidermis, but by tissue closely surrounding the embryo.'

Chemical Composition-The cells of the testa contain tannin; the cotyledons a yellow colouring matter, but no sugar. The air-dried seeds give off 10 per cent. of water at 100° C., and on subsequent incineration leave 7 per cent. of ash, of which nearly a fourth is phosphoric acid.

Ether extracts from the pulverized seeds 6 per cent. of a fœtid, fatty oil, having a bitter taste. Amylic alcohol removes in addition a small quantity of resin. Alcohol added to a concentrated aqueous extract, forms a precipitate of mucilage, amounting when dried to 28 per cent. Burnt with soda-lime, the seeds yielded to Jahns 3-4 per cent. of nitrogen, equivalent to 22 per cent. of albumin. No researches have been yet made to determine the nature of the odorous principle.

2

Production and Commerce-Fenugreek is cultivated in Morocco, in the south of France near Montpellier, in a few places in Switzerland, in Alsace, and in some other provinces of the German and Austrian empires, as Thuringia and Moravia. It is produced on a far larger scale in Egypt, where it is known by the Arabic name Hulba, and whence it is exported to Europe and India. In 1873 it was stated that the profits of the European growers were much reduced by the seed being largely exported from Mogador and Bombay.

Under the Sanscrit name of Methi, which has passed, slightly modified, into several of the modern Indian languages, fenugreek is much grown in the plains of India during the cool season. In the year 1872-73, the quantity of seed exported from Sind to Bombay was 13,646 cwt., valued at £4,405. From the port of Bombay there were shipped in the same year 9,655 cwt., of which only 100 cwt. are reported as for the United Kingdom.*

3

Uses In Europe fenugreek as a medicine is obsolete, but the powdered seeds are still often sold by chemists for veterinary pharmacy and as an ingredient of curry powder. The chief consumption is, however, in the so-called Cattle Foods.

The fresh plant in India is commonly eaten as a green vegetable, while the seeds are extensively used by the natives in food and medicine.

1Figured by Lanessan in his French translation of the Pharmacographia, i. (1878) 345.

* Experiments performed in my laboratory in 1867.-F. A. F.

3 Annual Statement of the Trade and Navigation of Sind, for the year 1872-73, printed at Karachi, 1873. p. 36.

89.

Annual Statement, etc., Bombay, 1873.