VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS FEOM CHINA. 103 



subrotunda, extus scabra, fusca, intus albida, insipida, tactu cera- 

 cea, quorum decocto in morbis pulmonum et vesicae utuntur.' 



" I therefore wrote to my brother Thomas Hanbury of Shanghai, 

 who obtained for me not only the substance called Pe-foo-lmg^ 

 but a second, known as Choo-Ung, together with some cakes said 

 to be made from one or both of them. These cakes, or an imi- 

 tation of them, are commonly sold in the streets of Shanghai ; and 

 the cry of the itinerant vendors — A Hoo Ka Foo-ling Ka ! — is one 

 of the first of the many strange sounds to salute the ear of the 

 newly-arrived foreigner. 



" With respect to the Foo-ling itself, my first impression was 

 to regard it as the rhizome of some species of SmilcKC, allied to S. 

 China, L., the source of the drug known as China Hoot. Such 

 was the opinion of the older writers, as Martini, who, in his 

 ' Novus Atlas Sinensis' (1655), describes it as being the true China 

 Root. Cleyer also, in his ' Specimen Medicinse Sinicse ' (1682), 

 says of it *, ' Est idem quod Lusitanice dicitur Pao de China, nisi 

 quod album et multo melius sit rubeo illo, et etiam carius multo.' 



" I had soon, however, to alter my opinion on testing a decoction 

 of the Foo-ling with iodine and finding it to contain no starch, the 

 abundant presence of that body being a marked character of the 

 Smilax rhizome. I found also, upon turning to the ' Herbarium 

 Amboinense ' (xi. 123), where Eumphius describes it as JEoelen, 

 that its distinctness from China E-oot had been there noticed. Mr. 

 Kippist, however, soon settled the question, by pointing out to me 

 in the * Linnean Transactions t ' a paper by Dr. James Macbride, 

 of South Carolina, entitled " Some account of the Lycoperdon 

 solidum of the Flora Virginica," read before the Society 3rd June, 

 1817 ; and at the same time laying before me a fine series of spe- 

 cimens of Lg coper don solidiim, with which plant it was evident 

 the Chinese Fe-foo-ling was, if not identical, at least very nearly 

 related. 



" Of the Choo-Ung, I have nothing to tell you, except that, in 

 common with the Fe-foo-ling, it is described and figured in the 

 great Chinese Herbal, the Pun-tsaou^ 



Mr. Hanbury has, in addition to these remarks, furnished me 

 with a translation of that portion of the ' Pun-tsaou ' which relates 

 to these productions, which I have the pleasure of now laying 

 before the Society :|:. 



* Medicamenta simplicia, No. 189. t Vol. xii. p. 368. 



X Fuh-ling and Choo-Ung. — Abstract of the account given in the great 



