128 ORD. VI. Umbellate. _ANETHUM FQNICULUM. 
blunt stigma: the — are two, oval, and deeply furrowed. The 
flowers appear in June. 
The seeds of Foeniculum dulce are admitted of the Materia Medics 
in both Pharmacopoeias, and the root of Feeniculum vulgare also in 
that of the Edinburgh College ;* but both these plants being con- 
sidered as varieties of the Anethum Feeniculum, they are comprised 
in the figure here prefixed. 
Fennel is found to grow wild in many eits of England, affecting 
dry chalky soils; but that which is cultivated in our gardens is more 
fragrant, of a sweeter flavour, and, excepting the seeds, which, are 
brought from the south of Europe,* commonly used both for medi- 
cinal and culinary purposes. 
The seeds have an aromatic smell, and a warm sweetish taste.— 
“ Water extracts.the virtue of these seeds very imperfectly by infu 
- sion, but carries it off totally in evaporation: after repeated infu- 
sion, they retain part of their aromatic warmth, and the liquors are 
much less agreeable than the seeds in substance; after boiling for 
some time, the seeds prove entirely insi pid, and the decoction, 
inspissated to the consistence of an extract, is very nearly so. By 
distillation they impregnate water with their flavour: a gallon re- 
eeives a strong impregnation from a pound of the seeds. A large 
portion of essential oil separates m the distillation;—in smell re- 
sembling the fennel, im taste mild and sweetish like ‘the oil of 
aniseeds, and like it also congealing, by a slight cold, into a white 
butyraceous mass. These seeds contain likewise a considerable 
quantity of a gross oil of the expressed kind, which, when freed from 
the essential oil, discovers no particular smell.or taste. This oil is 
_* © By Feeniculum dulce, (Dr. Cullen says) we mean seeds imported from .a 
southern climate; we allow however the roots to be taken, as they most .conve- 
miently may, from the plants growing in our gardens.” M. M. vol. i. p. 158. 
* © Feeniculum dulce copiesissime colitur in Italia & Sicilia, quarum regionum 
_ ¢lima plus-illi -conciliat dulcitatis, quam in Gallia attingere potest, cqsnaggglen 
‘ planta junior, cum radice & herba, frequenter ibi estur cruda cum sale. & pane.” 
“Bergius, M. M, p. 228.- See Labat, Voyage en Espagne & en Italie. t. 5. p. 170. 
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