HERB A SABINE. 627 



^cends in the Balkhasch and Alatau mountains to 8,000 feet. In 

 ^ orth America it has been gathered on the banks of the river Saskatch- 

 ewan, at Lake Huron, in Newfoundland, and in Saint Pierre and 

 Miquelon. There are, however, a few very closely allied species which 

 may occasionally have been confounded with savin. 



History— Savin is mentioned as a veterinary drug by Marcus 

 rorcius Cato,^ a Roman writer on husbandry who flourished in the 

 second century B.C.; and it was well known to Dioscoridcs (under the 

 name of ^pdOv) and Pliny. The plant, which is frequently named in 

 the early English leech-books written before the Norman Conquest,' 

 may probably have been introduced into Britain by the Romans. 

 Uiarlemagne, a.d. 812, ordered that it should be cultivated on the 

 imperial farms of Central Europe. Its virtues as a stimulating appli- 

 cation to wounds and ulcers are noticed in the verses of Macer Floridus,' 

 composed in the 10th century. 



Description — The medicinal part of savin is the young and tender 

 green shoots, stripped from the more woody twigs and branches. These 

 are clothed with minute scale-like rhomboid leaves, arranged alternately 

 m opposite pairs. On the younger twigs they are closely adpressed, 

 thick, concave, rounded on the back, in the middle of which is a con- 

 spicuous depressed oil gland. As the shoots grow older the leaves 

 become more pointed and divergent from the stem. Savin evolves, when 

 rubbed or bruised, a strong and not disagreeable odour. The blackish 

 truit or galbulus resembling a small berry, y^p of an inch in diameter, 

 grows on a short recurved stalk, and is covered with a blue bloom. It 

 js globular, dry, but abounding in essential oil, and contains 1 to 4 

 httle bony nuts. 



. .To mycologists, Juniperus Sahina, at least in the cultivated state, 

 ^ interesting on account of the parasitic fungus Fodisoma fiiscum 

 •J-'uby, the mycelium of which produces, on the leaves of the pear-trees, 

 the so-called Moestelia cancellata Rebentisch. 



em 



per 



--V.011 ,;ujjs aiiorci z 10 4 per cent., ana tne oerries auuui lu p«i eenu. 

 ^^xanuned in a column 50 millimetres long it was found to deviate the 

 ray of polarized light 27° to the right, the oil used having been distilled 

 3' one of us in London from the fresh plant cultivated at Mitcham. 

 ^ne same result was obtained from the oil abstracted ten years pre- 

 viously from savin collected wild on the Alps of the Canton de Vaud, 

 Switzerland. We find that, by the prolonged action of the air, if the 

 oil IS kept in a vessel not carefully closed, the rotatory power after the 

 ^apse of years is greatly reduced. Savin oil, according to Tilden (1877), 

 J^^ids asmall amount of an oil boiling at 1G0°, which answers to the 

 lornuila C^^H^'O. The greater part of the oil was found by that chemist 

 ^0 boil above 200° C. Tilden asserts that no tei-pene is present in the 

 hvl f^^^^' ^^ ^^^^'o not been able to obtain from it a crystallized 

 ytlrochloride. Savin tops contain traces of tannic matter. 



Cap Ixx. {Buhiis medicamentum). herharuvi, Lipsia;, 1S32. 48. . . . "Dup- 



37.,"- 18G5) xii. ' -^ '' -^ mentis iubet Orihamis auctor." 



^aoulant, Macer Floridua de virihus 



