392 ODOROGRAPHIA. 
the whole of the Ruku growing wild in a cocoa-nut plantation in 
Province Wellesley, and 700 pikuls of this dried herb were collected 
and taken to Penang, to be used for the adulteration of patchouli. 
Therefore it is always preferable to a local distiller to buy a crop 
just as it is cut, as then it is easy to see if it is adulterated or not, 
but if the leaves are bought it is very tedious to detect the imposi- 
tion. The Ruku leaves are rather whiter, and the stalks smaller 
and rounder. Seed-vessels are also often mixed with them. The 
smell of the two herbs is quite different, but if the sample has been 
baled for some time this would be imperceptible, except as com- 
municating a twang to the general odour of the sample. 
Another adulteration is the Urena lobata, L., var. sinuata. It 
is Called Perpulut by the Malays. It is not cultivated, but it is a 
very common weed all over the Straits Settlements, and is to be 
had in any quantity for the trouble of collecting it. It is found 
in considerable quantity in cocoa-nut plantations and waste places 
near the coast. The leaves when dried are much like those of the 
herb it is used to adulterate, but, unlike it, are scentless. People 
who gather it obtain $3 per pikul, dried, for mixing with the 
patchouli. 
A very complete examination of the leaves of patchouli as found 
in commerce has been made by Dr. Heimrich Paschkis, giving 
microscopic representations of sections of the true plant, also of 
the leaves used as adulterants *. He says :—“ Even ina superficial 
examination of the dried leaves considerable differences are observed 
in the leaf-balls taken from the same sample. Some are of a 
light wood-brown colour, others dark red-brown, and others 
greenish coloured ; some have a sparse, others an abundant and 
even velvety pubescence. These differences become still more 
clearly apparent when the balls are soaked for a time in water, and 
the leaves then carefully spread out and smoothed. 
“The true leaf is broad, ovate, coarsely crenate, dentate, 10 centi- 
métres long, diminishing at the base into a long petiole, light 
brown, moderately thin, not very abundantly hairy on both sides, 
with one principal nerve and the secondary nerves forming curves 
running towards the margin. The microscopic examination reveals 
in the epidermis of the upper and under sides, deeply indented, 
mostly elongated flat cells, 0-063 millim. long, and 0-030 millim. 
* Zeitschrift of the Austrian Pharm. Assoc. Republished in Pharm. Journ. 
[3] xi. p. 813. 
