an essential oil, the largest proportion of which was found by Gladstone (1864-1872) to be a hydrocarbon, CH16, to which he gave the name Anethene. This substance has a lemon-like odour, sp. gr. 846, and boils at 172° C. It deviates a ray of polarized light strongly to the right. Nietzki (1874) ascertained that there is, moreover, `present another hydrocarbon, C10H16, in a very small proportion, which boils at 155-160°. A third constituent of oil of dill is in all probability identical with carvol (see page 307); we prepared from the former immediately the crystals (C1H11O)2SH2.

Uses The distilled water of dill is stomachic and carminative, and frequently prescribed as a vehicle for more active medicines. The seeds are much used for culinary and medicinal purposes by the people of India, but are little employed in Continental Europe.

FRUCTUS CORIANDRI.

Semen Coriandri; Coriander Fruits, Coriander Seeds, Corianders; F. Fruits de Coriandre; G. Koriander.

Botanical Origin-Coriandrum sativum L., a small glabrous, annual plant, apparently indigenous to the Mediterranean and Caucasian regions, not known growing wild, but now found as a cornfield weed throughout the temperate parts of the Old World. It is cultivated in many countries, and has thus found its way even to Paraguay. In England the cultivation of coriander has long been carried on, but only to a very limited extent.

History Coriander appears to occur in the famous Egyptian papyrus Ebers; it is also mentioned, under the name of Kustumburu, in early Sanskrit authors, and is also met with in the Scriptures.1

The plant owes its names Κόριον, Κορίαννον, and Κοριάνδρον, or also in the middle ages, Koliavopov, to the offensive odour it exhales when handled, and which reminds one of bugs,-in Greek Kópis. This character caused it to be regarded in the middle ages as having poisonous properties. The ripe fruits which are entirely free from the foetid smell of the growing plant, were used as a spice by the Jews and the Romans, and in medicine from a very early period. Cato, who wrote on agriculture in the 3rd century B.C., notices the cultivation of coriander. Pliny states that the best is that of Egypt. It is of frequent occurrence in the book "De opsoniis et condimentis" of Apicius Coelius, about the 3rd century of our era. Coriander is also included in the list of Charlemagne, alluded to pages 92, 98, etc.

Coriander was well known in Britain prior to the Norman Conquest, and often employed in ancient Welsh and English medicine and cookery.

Cultivation-Coriander, called by the farmers Col, is cultivated in the eastern counties of England, especially in Essex. It is sometimes sown with caraway, and being an annual is gathered and harvested the first year, the caraway remaining in the ground. The seedling plants are hoed so as to leave those that are to remain in rows 10 to 12 inches 1Exod. xvi. 31; Num. xi. 7.

2 Petrus de Abbano, Tract. de Venenis, Venetiis, 1473. capp. 25. 46.

apart. The plant is cut with sickles, and when dry the seed is thrashed out on a cloth in the centre of the field. On the best land, 15 cwt. per acre is reckoned an average crop.'

Description-The fruit of coriander consists of a pair of hemispherical mericarps, firmly joined so as to form an almost regular globe, measuring on an average about of an inch in diameter, crowned by the stylopodium and calycinal teeth, and sometimes by the slender diverging styles. The pericarp bears on each half, 4 perfectly straight sharpish ridges, regarded as secondary (juga secundaria); two other ridges, often of darker colour, belonging to the mericarps in common, the separation of which takes place in a rather sinuous line. The shallow depression between each pair of these straight ridges is occupied by a zig-zag raised line (jugum primarium), of which there are therefore 5 in each mericarp. It will thus be seen that each mericarp has 5 (zig-zag) so-called primary ridges, and 4 (keeled and more prominent) secondary, besides the lateral ridges which mark the suture or line of separation. There are no vittæ on the outer surface of the pericarp. Of the 5 teeth of the calyx, 2 often grow into long, pointed, persistent lobes; they proceed from the outer flowers of the umbel.

Though the two mericarps are closely united, they adhere only by the thin pericarp, enclosing when ripe a lenticular cavity. On each side of this cavity, the skin of the fruit separates from that of the seed, displaying the two brown vittæ of each mericarp. In transverse section, the albumen appears crescent-shaped, the concave side being towards the cavity. The carpophore stands in the middle of the latter as a column, connected with the pericarp only at top and bottom.

Corianders are smooth and rather hard, in colour buff or light brown. They have a very mild aromatic taste, and, when crushed, a peculiar fragrant smell. When unripe, their odour, like that of the fresh plant, is offensive. The nature of the chemical change that occasions this alteration in odour has not been made out.

The Indian corianders shipped from Bombay are of large size and of elongated form.

Microscopic Structure The structural peculiarities of coriander fruit chiefly refer to the pericarp. Its middle layer is made up of thick walled ligneous prosenchyme, traversed by a few fibro-vascular bundles which in the zig-zag ridges vary exceedingly in position.

Chemical Composition-The essential oil of coriander has a composition indicated by the formula C10H18O, and is therefore isomeric with borneol. If the elements of water are abstracted by phosphoric anhydride, it is converted, according to Kawalier (1852), into an oil of offensive odour, C10H16.

The fruits yield of volatile oil from 0.7 to 1.1 per cent.; as the vittæ are well protected by the woody pericarp, corianders should be bruised before being submitted to distillation. Trommsdorff (1835) found the fruits to afford 13 per cent. of fixed oil.

The fresh herb distilled in July when the fruits were far from ripe, yielded to one of us (F.) from 0:57 to 11 per mille of an essential oil possessing in a high degree the disagreeable odour already alluded to. This oil was found to deviate the ray of polarized light 1·1° to the right 1 R. Baker, in Morton's Cyclopædia of Agriculture, i. (1855) 545.

when examined in a column 50 mm. long. The oil distilled by us from ripe commercial fruit deviated 51° to the right.

Production and Commerce-Coriander is cultivated in various parts of Continental Europe, and, as already stated, to a small extent in England. It is also produced in Northern Africa and in India. In 1872-73, the export of coriander from the province of Sind' was 948 cwt.; from Bombay in the same year 619 cwt. From Calcutta3 there were shipped in 1870-71, 16,347 cwt.

Uses Coriander fruits are reputed stimulant and carminative, yet are but little employed in medicine. They are however used in veterinary practice, and by the distillers of gin, also in some countries in cookery.

FRUCTUS CUMINI.

Fructus vel Semen Cymini; Cumin or Cummin1 Fruits, Cummin Seeds; F. Graines de Cumin; G. Mutterkümmel, Kreuzkümmel, Langer oder Römischer Kümmel, Mohrenkümmel.

Botanical Origin.-Cuminum Cyminum L., a small annual plant, indigenous to the upper regions of the Nile, but carried at an early period by cultivation to Arabia, India and China, as well as to the countries bordering the Mediterranean. The fruits of the plant ripen as far north as Southern Norway; but in Europe, Sicily and Malta alone produce them in quantity.

6

History-Cumin was well known to the ancients; it is alluded to by the Hebrew prophet Isaiah," and is mentioned in the gospel of Matthew as one of the minor titheable productions of the Holy Land. Under the name Kúpavov, it is commended for its agreeable taste by Dioscorides, in whose day it was produced on the coasts of Asia Minor and Southern Italy. It is named as Cuminum by Horace and Persius; Scribonius Largus, in the first century of our era, mentions Cuminum æthiopicum, silvaticum and thebaicum.

During the middle ages, cumin was one of the spices in most common use. Thus in A.D. 716, an annual provision of 150 lb. of cumin for the monastery of Corbie in Normandy, was not thought too large a supply." Edrisi mentioned cumin as a product of Morocco (see article Fructus Carui, p. 305), Algeria and Tunisia. It was in frequent use in England, its average price between 1264 and 1400 being a little over 2d. per lb.s Cumin is enumerated in the Liber albus" of the city of London, compiled in 1419, among the merchandize on which the king levied the impost called scavage. It is mentioned in 1453 as one of the articles

10

ofwhich the Grocers' Company had the weighing and oversight, and was classed in 1484 in the same way in the German warehouse in Venice.1

10

Description-The fruit, the colour of which is brown, has the usual structure of the order; it is of an elongated ovoid form, tapering towards each end, and somewhat laterally compressed. The mericarps, which do not readily separate from the carpophore, are about of an inch in length and of an inch in greatest breadth. Each has 5 primary ridges which are filiform, and scabrous or muriculate, and 4 secondary covered with rough hairs. Between the primary ridges is a single elongated vitta, and 2 vittæ occur on the commissural surface. A transverse section of the seed shows a reniform outline. There is a form of C. Cyminum in cultivation, the fruit of which is perfectly glabrous. Cumin has a strong aromatic taste and smell, far less agreeable than that of caraway.

Microscopic Structure-The hairs are rather brittle, sometimes mm. in length, formed of cells springing from the epidermis. The larger consists of groups of cells, vertically or laterally combined, and enclosed by a common envelope; the smaller of but a single cell ending in a rounded point. The whole pericarp is rich in tannic matter, striking with salts of iron a dark greenish colour.

The tissue of the seed is loaded with colourless drops of a fatty oil; the vittæ with a yellowish-brown essential oil. But the most striking contents of the parenchyme of the albumen consist of transparent, colourless, spherical grains, 7 to 5 mkm. in diameter, several of which are enclosed in each cell. Under a high magnifying power, they show a central cavity with a series of concentric layers around it, frequently traversed by radial clefts. Examined in polarized light, these grains display exactly the same cross as is seen in granules of starch, although their behaviour with chemical tests at once proves that they are by no means that substance; in fact iodine does not render them blue, but intensely brown. Grains of the same character, assuming sometimes a crystalloid form, occur in most umbelliferous fruits, and in many seeds of other orders. All these bodies are composed of albuminous and fatty matters; the more crystalloid form as met with in the seeds of Ricinus and in the fruit of parsley, is the body called by Hartig Aleuron.

Chemical Composition-Cumin fruits yielded to Bley (1829) 7 per cent. of fat oil, 13 per cent. of resin (?), 8 of mucilage and gum, 15 of albuminous matter, and a large amount of malates. Their peculiar, strong, aromatic smell and taste, depend on the essential oil of which they afford as much as 4 per cent. It contains about 56 per cent. of (CHO Cuminol (or Cuminaldehyde), C*H* a liquid of sp. gr. 0·972, [C3H"' boiling point 237° C. It has also been met with, in 1858, by Trapp in the oil of Cicuta virosa. By boiling cuminol with potash in alcoholic solution, cuminalcohol, CH4

cuminic acid, CH COOH

SCH❜OH

C3H' , as well as the potassium salt of

{CH7 are formed.

1 Thomas, Fontego dei Todeschi in Venezia, 1874. 252.

The oil of cumin, secondly, contains a mixture of hydrocarbons. That which constitutes about one half of the crude oil has been first obtained in 1841 by Gerhardt and Cahours, just from the oil under notice, and therefore called Cymene (or also Cymol). It is a liquid of 0873 sp. gr. at 0° (32° F.), boiling at 175°; neither cymene nor cuminol have the same odour and taste as the crude oil. Many other plants have been noticed as containing cymene among the constituents of their essential oils. Thus for instance Cicuta virosa L., Carum Ajowan (page 304), Thymus vulgaris (see art. Folia Thymi), Eucalyptus globulus Labill.

CH3

Cymene, C*H* {CH

(Propylmethyl-benzol), may also be artificially obtained from a large number of essential oils having the composition CH16, or CH1O, or C10H16O, or C10H18O. It differs very remarkably from the oils of the formula COH, inasmuch as cymene yields the crystallizable cymensulphonic acids when it is warmed with concentrated sulphuric acid.

Lastly, there is present in the oil of cumin a small amount of a terpene, CH, boiling at 155.8° C., as stated in 1865 by C. M. Warren, and in 1873 by Beilstein and Kupffer.

The dextrogyrate power of cuminol is a little less strong than that of cymene; artificial cymene is optically inert.

Commerce-Cumin is shipped to England from Mogador, Malta and Sicily. In Malta there were in 1863, 140 acres under cultivation with this crop; in 1865, 730 acres, producing 2766 cwt.1

The export of cumin from Morocco in 1872 was 1657 cwt.; that from Bombay in the year 1872-73 was 6766 cwt.;3 and 20,040 cwt. from Calcutta' in the year 1870-71.

Uses-Cumin is sold by druggists as an ingredient of curry powders, but to a much larger extent for use in veterinary medicine.

CAPRIFOLIACEÆ.

FLORES SAMBUCI.

Elder Flowers; F. Fleurs de Sureau; G. Holunderblüthe,
Fliederblumen.

Botanical Origin-Sambucus nigra L.-a large deciduous shrub or small tree, indigenous to Southern and Central Europe (not in Russia), Western Asia, the Crimea, the regions of the Caucasus and Southern Siberia. It is believed to be a native of England and Ireland, but not to be truly wild in Scotland. In other northern parts of Europe, as Norway and Sweden, the elder appears only as a plant introduced there during the middle ages by the monks."

History The Romans, as we learn from Pliny, made use in