14 ORD. I. Conifere. JUNIPERUS COMMUNIS, 
Juniper is supposed to be the axes of the ancients,|| who distin- 
guished it into two kinds.’ Both the tops and berries of this plant 
are direéted for use in our Pharmacopeeias, but the latter are usually 
preferred, and are brought to us chiefly from Holland and Italy. 
“ They have a moderately strong not disagreeable smell, and a 
warm pungent sweetish taste, which if they are long chewed or 
previously well bruised, is followed by a considerable bitterness. 
The sweetness appears to reside in the juice or soft pulpy part of 
the berry; the bitterness, in the seeds; and the aromatic flavour, 
in oily vesicles, spread throughout the substance both of the pulp 
and the seeds, and distinguishable even by the eye. The fresh 
berries yield, on expression, a rich sweet honey-like aromatic 
juice; if previously powdered so as to thoroughly break the seeds, 
which is not done without great difficulty, the juice proves tart and 
bitter. The same differences are observable also in tinétures and 
infusions made from the dry berries, according as the berry is taken 
entire or thoroughly bruised. They give out nearly all their 
virtue both to water and reétified spirit. Distilled with water they 
yield a yellowish essential oil, very subtile and pungent, in smell 
greatly resembling the berries, in quantity (if they have been 
sufficiently bruised) about one ounce from forty: the decottion 
mspissated to the consistence of a rob or extract, has a pleasant, 
balsamic, ‘sweet taste, with a greater or less degree of bitterishness; 
A part of the flavour of the berries arises also in distillation with 
rectified spirit: the inspissated tméture consists of two distiné 
substances; one oily and sweet; the other tenacious, resinous, and 
aromatic.”’* 
oF 
ij The odour of the Tin tere, though extremely fragrant, was z: Virgil, 
thought to be noxious: 
Surgamus; solet esse gravis eantantibus umbra: 
Juniperi gravis Sabra : nocent & frugibus umbre. 
Ecx. £. v.75. 
* See Pliny. Lib. xvi. cap. 25. Gum Sandrach, known also by the name of 
pounce, is the product of this species of Juniper: it exudes through the crevices 
of the bark, or the perforations made by inseéts, © Lewis Mat. Med. p. 362. 
