424 ORD. XXIV. Papilionacee. — DOLICHOS PRURIENS. 
brown bristly hairs, and containing four, five, or six seeds, of a 
brownish colour. The flowers appear in September and October. 
The plant, known by the name of Cow-itch, Couhage, and 
Cowhage, is referred by Bergius and Miller to the Dolichos urens 
of Linnzus.; and this error is also to be found in-Aiton’s Hortus 
Kewensis. 
The pods of both D. urens and D. pruriens are beset with 
‘setaceous hairs, but of the former these are shorter, and very 
thinly scattered over the pod, which is keel-shaped, much longer, 
and more than twice the breadth of that of the latter, and marked 
transversely with deep furrows. These circumstances show, that 
the D. urens is widely different from the officinal Cowhage here 
figured, which is a native of both Indies, and appears to have 
been cultivated in England in the time of Ray by Mr. Charles 
Hatton ;* and the plant is now growing in the apothecaries garden 
cat Chelsea; but we cannot learn that it has ever been known to 
produce perfect flowers in our garden stoves: so that for the very - 
correct figure subjoined to this sheet we are indebted to the 
liberality of Sir Joseph Banks, in whose herbarium we found an 
excellent specimen of the plant. 
The sharp hairs of the pod readily penetrate the skin, and cause 
a very troublesome itching, a mischievous purpose to which in this 
country they have been long chiefly converted. But the violent 
irritation which these hairs produce upon the external skin has not 
deterred practitioners from administering them internally, espe- 
cially in the West Indies, where they have been generally employ- 
ed for many years as a safe and efficacious anthelmintic; and with 
a view to this effect they are now admitted into the Materia Medica 
of the Edinburgh Pharmacopeeia. 
Sir Hans Sloane, who has noticed the diuretic qualities of the 
* Terre commissa in horto D. Caroli Hatton plantas produxere. Vide Raii. 
#list. p. 887. In the Hort. Kew. D. pruriens is said to have been first introduced 
hhere by Mr, Gilbert Alexander: this mistake was probably caused by confounding 
the D. pruriens with the D. ureus. 
atid. 
