- ORCHIS MASCULA. ORD. XLVI. Orchidee. 783° 
cultivation of a plant in Britain which promises to afford so useful 
and wholesome a food as the Salep. 
Dr. Percival says, “ Mr. Mault has lately favoured the public 
with a new manner of curing the Orchis root, and as I have seen 
many specimens of his Salep, at least equal if not superior to any 
brought from the Levant, I can recommend the following, which 
is his process, from my own knowledge of its success. The new 
root is to be washed in water, and the fine brown skin which 
covers it is to be separated by means of a small brush, or by 
dipping the root in hot water, and rubbing it with a coarse linen 
cloth. When a sufficient number of roots have been thus cleansed, 
they are to be spread on a tin plate, and placed in an oven 
heated to the usual degree, where they are to remain six or ten 
minutes, in which time they will have lost their milky whiteness, 
and acquired a transparency like horn, without any diminution of 
~bulk.. Being arrived ‘at this state, they are to be removed, in 
order to dry and harden in the air, which will require several days 
to effect ; or os using a pias! ts heat they 1 a, be finished i in 
a few hours.” 
 Salep, considered. as an ice a diet, is accounted Secalehe 
nutritious, as containing a great quantity of farinaceous matter in 
a small bulk, and’ pave. it has been thought fit to constitute a part 
of the provisions of every ship’s company to prevent a famine at 
sea. For itis observed by Dr. Percival, that this powder and the 
dried gelatinous part of flesh, or portable soup, dissolved in 
boiling water, form a rich thick jelly, capable of supporting life 
for a considerable length of time. An ounce of each of these 
* See Phil. Trans. vol. 59. p. 2. 
> Percival’s Essays Med. & Exper. vol. ii. p. 39. 
* The properest time for gathering the rogts is when the seed is formed, and 
the stalk is ready to fall, because the new bulb, of which the Salep is made, is 
then arrived to its full maturity, and may be distinguished from the old one by a 
white bud rising from the top of it, which is the germ of the orchis of the 
succeeding year. Percival, 1. c. 
