vials, usually of minute capacity, which travellers bring home as presents after a journey in the East. They hold perhaps about fifteen drops of oil, are tied over with bladder and red silk, and, what invests them with most value, are sold in the bazaar to the unwitting traveller at a high price. They often contain simply

a few drops of geranium oil, the bladder being smeared with a touch of attar.

Having detailed the history of rose-oil from its distillation to its transport into commerce, but little further need be said. Although, as has been shown, it is the Balkin that produces the attar of commerce, a small exception must be made in favor of the districts of Grasse and Nice in Southern France and of Algeria, where also attar is distilled. But the quantity there produced is so small and the oil of far higher congealing point, and on that account of much less powerful odor, that it is vastly inferior to the oriental attar, and is mentioned in this place only as a curiosity. What has been written about the production of rose-oil at Brussa is simply untrue. At Adrianople even rosedistillation is no longer attempted.--Lon. Pharm. Jour., Dec. 1867.

NOTE ON A NEW KIND OF KAMALA.

BY DR. F. A. FLÜCKIGER,

Lecture on Materia Medica in the University of Berne, honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society of St. Petersburg.

Kamala is the name of the small glands which densely cover the tricoccous fruit of Mallotus phillippinensis, Müller Argov. (De Candolle, 'Prodromus,' xv. 980), formerly known as Rottlera tinctoria, Roxburgh, and are simply brushed off from the ripe capsules. The same glands occur also in the thin tomentum of the under side of the leaves, and even on all parts of the male spike of the shrub; but in the latter place they are so little numerous and so scattered, that they are scarcely seen without the magnifying glass. All these glands are of an irregular spheroidal shape, but depressed and somewhat flattened on that side where they are fixed upon the capsules or leaves, while the opposite side is more regularly domed. If they are

caused to roll under water or glycerine, the glands all ultimately show to the observer their flat side. In its centre we find a very short stalk-cell, from which a certain number of small clavate cells radiate in different directions, thus constituting the somewhat globular form of the gland, which is covered by a weak integument. The thicker ends of the small clavate cells within, appear at the outside as soft protuberances, upon which partly depends the irregularity of the nearly globular form of the glands. The radiate cells in question are arranged around the centre of the flat side to the number of from 9 to 30. If only the basal side is examined, they will be seen to be filled with a dark brown or brownish-red resin, the intermediate spaces and the outer membrane being of a light yellow color. The outline of that side, which is always turned to the observer, forms thus an undulated circle or ellipsis, the diameter of which varies from 70 to 120 micromillimetres (thousandth parts of a millimetre), the heighth of the whole gland being always considerably less.

The kamala glands are always accompanied by a tolerable amount of characteristics, stellate, colorless or brownish hairs, belonging equally to the fruits of Mallotus, and some fragments of the latter and inorganic purities.

I had the opportunity for examining authentic specimens of the above plant from the Calcutta gardens, from which I am indebted to my friend Hanbury, and several others received from the late Mr. Zollinger, under the name Rottlera affinis, Hasskarl, 3. sumatrana, a species now united with Mallotus philippinensis by the recent author of the Euphorbiaceae in the 'Prodromus.' The glands of these plants I find to be certainly identical with commercial kamala, as hitherto furnished by English as well as by continental importers, and the mother plant must certainly be, as generally supposed, the said Mallotus or Rottlera.

The resins contained in kamala, to the amount of 78 per cent. have been examined, in 1855, by Anderson,* who stated, at the same time, that 3.8 per cent. of the weight of kamala are due to inorganic matters. I must confess that I never met with the

* Edinburgh New Phil. Journ. vol. i. p. 330; Pharm. Journ. and Transactions, vol. xvii. p. 407.

drug of so great purity; all my samples yield at least three times that amount of ash. But for a long time past the kamala we have had on the Continent has been of bad quality, containing more than half its weight of sand and sesquioxide of iron. Students of Materia Medica being indebted to my friend Mr. Daniel Hanbury for some information about this valuable drug, I lately applied for a specimen to that gentleman, who presented me with an evidently fine sample, which recommended itself by a dark red and somewhat violet color, and being not dense. The color indeed is different from the brick-red hue we are accustomed to see in kamala as found hitherto in Europe, and the miscroscopic examination affords full evidence that this newly imported drug cannot be furnished by the same plant, although it may belong to one closely allied.

The general structure of the new kamala is the same as that of the common kind,—that is to say, it is formed of small resincells covered by a light yellow membrane. But their form is not globular; the glands are rather of cylindrical, or often nearly conical shape, so that they show, when seen under the microscope, the outlines of an elliptical or ovoid figure, and not a circle. Their longer diameter is of 170 to 200 micromillimetres, the shorter from 70 to 100. The smallest glands of the new sort are as large as the majority of those of the true kamala. Even that side of the former, by which they were fixed upon the fruit, is but a little flat, and only perceptible when the glands are allowed to swim or roll in a liquid. It is this side only which shows small resin-cells radiating from its centre, as in the common glands of Rottlera; but besides these, the whole arrangement of the other small cells is thoroughly different, and they are not of a clavate but of a simply subcylindrical form. The structure of the glands of the new drug may be explained by stating that they are divided into four or five transverse sections or stages, each of which contains a series of perhaps twenty small resin-cells, arranged in a parallel vertical order, very dissimilar from the radiate arrangement seen in common kamala, as will be distinctly observed if the drug is previously exhausted by alcohol or ether, and then crushed under glass, or completely washed by weak spirit and then examined under water. The

empty resin-cells are ruptured at the boiling-point; the observer can count five, seven or ten of them in each of the three, four or five ranges or transverse divisions of the gland, if he adjusts the microscope exactly so that only the upper side of the gland occupies the field. The point of insertion of the gland is marked, though but rarely, in the very centre of the base, by a very small stalk-cell. The formation of common kamala has been well explained by Dr. Vogl, of Vienna, as occasioned by a successive perpendicular division of a mother cell; here we have a transverse horizontal division. There can be no doubt that the kamala in question must belong to another plant than Mallotus philippinensis, and I am glad to state that Dr. Müller (Argoviensis), the learned author of the Euphorbiacea in De Candolle's Prodromus,' is of the same opinion. In the genus Mallotus (formerly Rottlera) there are some other species besides M. philippinensis which bear colored fruit,-as for instance, M. atrovirens, M. japonicus, M. Albus. M. oreophilus, M. ricinoides; further researches are needful to make out to which of them our new drug may belong, if indeed it belongs to any one of them. Besides its peculiar form, structure, and dimensions, I have observed, moreover, that the new kamala is mixed with nearly colorless hairs, but that they are quite simple, not stellate or tufted as in common kamala. I will not mention other accidental fragments of the plant which accompany the glands; they may become of comparative utility in the determination of the plant from which the drug is derived.

6

Another fact of some interest is the curious behaviour of the new kamala at the temperature of 200° to 212° Fahr., when it takes an intense black color, losing only 5-6 per cent. of water. I presumed that this strange change might be due to the presence of an acid body, like a sulphate or sulphuric acid, but none such was found. Common kamala does not undergo any apparent alteration at the said temperature. The structure of the blackened kamala remains the same; it furnishes also the same tincture with spirit or alkaline liquids. The resins removed by alcohol, amount to 71.8 per cent. of the dried substance; the inorganic bodies (ash) to 12.9 per cent.

The alcoholic tincture, if allowed to evaporate very slowly,

leaves microscopic crystals, which I suppose to be Anderson's Rottlerine; this sort of kamala seems to be well suited to furnish that interesting principle.

[Note by Mr. Daniel Hanbury.] In accordance with a suggestion of my friend Dr. Flückiger I have set on foot some inquiries as to the origin of the new kamala described in the foregoing paper.

Dr. Flückiger has so carefully described the characters of the drug that there is but little which I can add. I may, however, point out that the new kamala has a distinct odor, which is exactly that which is perceptible when a tincture of the old sort is poured into water. Apart from its dissimilar structure when seen under the microscope, the new kamala differs most obviously from the old in its darker color, larger grains and freedom from earthy impurities.-London Pharm. Jour., Dec. 1867.

TAMPICO JALAP.

BY CHARLES UMNEY, F.C.S.

The attention of the pharmaceutist has recently been directed, in the various journals of pharmacy in this country, to a variety of jalap, rather abundant at the present time in the drug market, known as Tampico jalap; comparison has also been made between it and the officinal jalap (Exogonium purga) known commercially as Vera Cruz.

In a paper read at the Pharmaceutical Conference this year (Pharm. Journ., October, 1867), Mr. A. Southall gave the result of analysis of several samples of jalap of both varieties, the product of resin amounting, in some cases, to 33 per cent.

Messrs. T. and H. Smith remark (Pharm. Jour., November, 1867), that they have never succeeded in obtaining more than 15 per cent. of pure resin from any kind of jalap, neither have they ever seen a greater yield recorded.

They account for the discrepancy between their statements and that of Mr. Southall, by saying, that the resin as obtained by him could not have been in a state of purity and dryness. So far they are correct, but they have underrated the maximum yield of resin of jalap.