SECTION 1V.

Liquorice Plant.

Glycyrrhiza Glabra.-LINN.

The genus of glycyrrhiza has four species. The glabrous, or that which produces the liquorice of the shops, has a long, thick, creeping root, striking several feet deep into the ground; upright, firm, herbaceous, stalks annual, and three or four feet high, with winged leaves of four or five pairs of oval lobes, terminated by au odd one; and from the axillas erect spikes of pale blue; flowers in July or August, succeeded by short smooth pods.

Liquorice is a native of the South of Europe: it appears to have been cultivated in Britain in the time of Turner *. The chief places at which it has long been propagated for sale, are Pontefract in Yorkshire, Worksop in Nottinghamshire, and Godalming in Surry; but it is now planted by many gardeners in the vicinity of London, by whom the metropolis is supplied with the roots, which, after three years growth, are dug up for use, and are found to be in no respects inferior for medical purposes to those produced in their native climate.

Liquorice root, lightly boiled in a little water, gives out nearly all its sweetness: the decoction, pressed through a strainer, and inspi3sated with a gentle heat till it will no longer stick to the fingers, affords a better extract than that brought from abroad, and its quan. tity amounts to near half the weight of the root t. Rectified spirit takes up the sweet matter of the liquorice equally with water; and as it dissolves much less of the insipid mucilaginous substance of the root, the spirituous tinctures and extracts are proportionably sweeter than the watery 1.

This root contains a great quantity of saccharine matter,§ joined with some proportion of mucilage; and hence has a viscid sweet taste.

* Vide Tourn. Herb. part. 2. fol. 12. published in 1562.

+ If the liquorice be long boiled, its sweetness is greatly impaired, and the preparation contracts an ugnrateful bitterness and black colour.

Lewis, M. M.

This matter, according to Lewis, differs from that of other vegetables, "in being far less disposed to run into fermentation." L. c.

From the time of Theophrastus* it has been a received opinion that it very powerfully extinguishes thirst: this, if true, is the more remarkable, as sweet substances in general have a contrary effect +. It is in common use as a pectoral or emollient in catarrhal defluctions on the breast, coughs, hoarsenesses, &c. "Infusions or extracts made from it afford likewise very commodious vehicles or intermedia for the exhibition of other medicines: the liquorice taste concealing that of unpalatable drugs more effectually than syrups or any of the sweets of the saccharine kind ‡."

Theophrast. Plin. Cullen. Woodville.

SECTION V.

Tamarind Tree.

Tamarindus Indica.-LINN.

The Indian tamarind is the only known species of this genus. The tree rises to a great height, sending off numerous large branches, which spread to a considerable extent, and have a beautiful appearauce the trunk is erect, thick, and covered with rough bark of a greyish or ash-colour: the leaves are pinuated, alternate, consisting of several parts (about 14) of small pinnæ, which are opposite, oblong, obtuse, entire, smooth, of a yellowish green colour, and stand upon very short footstalks: the flowers approach to the papilionaceous kind, and are produced in racemi or lateral clusters: the calyx consists of four deciduous leaves, which are patent or reflexed, oblong, or rather ovate, entire, smooth, nearly equal in size, and straw. coloured or yellowish the petals are three, ovate, concave, acute, indented, and plaited at the edges, about the length of the calyx, and of a yellowish colour, beautifully variegated with red veins: the

Hence it was named adi↓ov, and the root directed to be chewed in dropsies and other disorders where great thirst prevailed. Vide Theoph. L. 9. cap. 13. Also noticed by Pliny, Lib. 22. c. 9.

† Dr. Cullen says, “to explain this, I observe that in the sweet of liquorice, separated from the root, I do not find that it quenches thirst more than other sweets; and I take the mistaken notion to have arisen from this, that if a piece of the root is chewed till the whole of the sweetness is extracted, that further chewing brings out the acid and bitterish matter, which stimulates the mouth and fauces, so as to produce an excretion of fluid, and thereby takes off the thirst which the sweetness bad produced." M. M. vol. ii. p. 407.

SECTION 1V.

Liquorice Plant.

Glycyrrhiza Glabra.-LINN.

The genus of glycyrrhiza has four species. The glabrous, or that which produces the liquorice of the shops, has a long, thick, creep ing root, striking several feet deep into the ground; upright, firm, herbaceous, stalks annual, and three or four feet high, with winged leaves of four or five pairs of oval lobes, terminated by au odd one; and from the axillas erect spikes of pale blue; flowers in July or August, succeeded by short smooth pods.

Liquorice is a native of the South of Europe: it appears to have been cultivated in Britain in the time of Turner *. The chief places at which it has long been propagated for sale, are Pontefract in Yorkshire, Worksop in Nottinghamshire, and Godalming in Surry; but it is now planted by many gardeners in the vicinity of London, by whom the metropolis is supplied with the roots, which, after three years growth, are dug up for use, and are found to be in no respects inferior for medical purposes to those produced in their native climate.

Liquorice root, lightly boiled in a little water, gives out nearly all its sweetness: the decoction, pressed through a strainer, and inspissated with a gentle heat till it will no longer stick to the fingers, affords a better extract than that brought from abroad, and its quan. tity amounts to near half the weight of the root t. Rectified spirit takes up the sweet matter of the liquorice equally with water; and as it dissolves much less of the insipid mucilaginous substance of the root, the spirituous tinctures and extracts are proportionably sweeter than the watery 1.

This root contains a great quantity of saccharine matter,§ joined with some proportion of mucilage; and hence has a viscid sweet taste.

Vide Tourn. Herb. part. 2. fol. 12. published in 1562.

+ If the liquorice be long boiled, its sweetness is greatly impaired, and the preparation contracts an ugnrateful bitterness and black colour.

Lewis, M. M.

་

This matter, according to Lewis, differs from that of other vegetables, "in being far less disposed to run into fermentation." L. c.

From the time of Theophrastus it has been a received opinion that it very powerfully extinguishes thirst: this, if true, is the more remarkable, as sweet substances in general have a contrary effect t. It is in common use as a pectoral or emollient in catarrhal defluctions on the breast, coughs, hoarsenesses, &c. "Infusions or extracts made from it afford likewise very commodious vehicles or intermedia for the exhibition of other medicines: the liquorice taste concealing that of unpalatable drugs more effectually than syrups or any of the sweets of the saccharine kind ‡.”

Theophrast. Plin. Cullen. Woodville.

SECTION V.

Tamarind Tree.

Tamarindus Indica.-LINN.

The Indian tamarind is the only known species of this genus. The tree rises to a great height, sending off numerous large branches, which spread to a considerable extent, and have a beautiful appear. auce the trunk is erect, thick, and covered with rough bark of a greyish or ash-colour: the leaves are pinnated, alternate, consisting of several parts (about 14) of small pinnæ, which are opposite, oblong, obtuse, entire, smooth, of a yellowish green colour, and stand upon very short footstalks: the flowers approach to the papilionaceous kind, and are produced in racemi or lateral clusters: the calyx consists of four deciduous leaves, which are patent or reflexed, oblong, or rather ovate, entire, smooth, nearly equal in size, and straw. coloured or yellowish: the petals are three, ovate, concave, acute, indented, and plaited at the edges, about the length of the calyx, and of a yellowish colour, beautifully variegated with red veins: the

Hence it was named adı↓ov, and the root directed to be chewed in dropsies and other disorders where great thirst prevailed. Vide Theoph. L. 9. cap. 13. Also noticed by Pliny, Lib. 22. c. 9.

+ Dr. Cullen says, "to explain this, I observe that in the sweet of liquorice, separated from the root, I do not find that it quenches thirst more than other sweets; and I take the mistaken notion to have arisen from this, that if a piece of the root is chewed till the whole of the sweetness is extracted, that further chewing brings out the acid and bitterish matter, which stimulates the mouth and fauces, so as to produce an excretion of fluid, and thereby takes off the thirst which the sweetness bad produced." M. M. vol. ii. p. 407.

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peduncles are about half an inch long, and each furnished with a joint, at which the flower turns inwards the filaments are com monly three, but in some flowers we have found four, in others only two; they are purple, united at the base, and furnished with incumbent brownish antheræ: the germen is oblong, compressed, incurved, standing upon a short pedicle: the style is tapering, somewhat longer than the filaments, and terminated by an obtuse stigma: the fruit is a pod of roundish compressed form, from three to five inches long, containing two, three, or four flattish angular shining seeds, lodged in a dark pulpy matter, and covered by several rough longitudinal fibres. The flowers, according to Jacquin, appear in Oc tober and November.

The generic character of Tamarindus is wholly founded upon this species, as no other of the same family has hitherto been discovered. Though Linnæus in his last edition of the Genera plantarum has followed Jacquin's description of the Tamarindus, in observing that the filaments are united at the base, a circumstance which ought to have placed it in the class Monadelphia, yet notwithstanding this, they neither thought proper to remove it from the class Triandria, where it also has been since retained in Murray's edition of the Systema Vegetabilium; and is consequently thus classed in the systematic arrangement prefixed to the first volume in the first edi. tion of Woodville. Since that time however, we have had an opportanity of examining the recent flower of the Tamarind, from which we have no doubt of its having the true character of the monadelphia class, in which we have now placed it, and for which we have lately had the authority of Schreber, and that of De Loureiro.

This tree, which appears upon various authorities, to be a native of both Indies, America, Egypt, and Arabia, was cultivated in Britain previous to the year 1633; for in Johnson's edition of Gerrard we are told, that in the figure of the Tamarind "is of a plant some six months old, arisen of a seed: and such by sowing of seeds I have seen growing in the garden of my deceased friend Mr. Tuggy." Miller informs us, that Tamarind plants, "if rightly managed, will grow very fast;" adding, "for I have had them upwards of three feet high in one summer, from seed, and have had two plants, which produced flowers the same season they were sown; but this was accidental, for none of the older plants have produced any flowers, although I have several plants of different ages, some of