VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 397 



SAXIFRAGA SARMENTOSA.— j;^ 5 :f (Hu-erh-ts'ao). 

 This grows in inoist, shady places, and is also cultivated on 

 stony ground. It has a creeping stalk, and sends up leaf-stalks 

 to the height of five or six inches, the leaf-blade being rounded, 

 hairy, and shaped like a tiger's ear or lotus leaf. For this 

 last reason it is sometimes called ^ ^ ^ (Shih-ho-yeh). The 

 flower, which opens in summer, is pale red. The drug is used 

 in clioleraic difficulties, vomiting, discharges from the ear, and 

 piles. In the last case, the plant is dried in the shade and then 

 set fire to in a bucket, and used to steam or smoke swollen, 

 painful hemorrhoids. 



SCAPHIUM SCAPHIGERUM.— ^^ ^ f$ (P'ang-ta-hai), 

 ^ ^ ^ (An-nan-tzu), ^^ -^ ^ (Ta-t'ung-kuo), :k W "P (Ta- 

 hai-tzii), 1223. This drug comes from the Tatung mountain 

 of Annam, where it grows in the darkness of the juugle. It 

 is described in the /'^y^/j-^'^ as follows : "The fruits resemble 

 dried Cnnar/ufu fruits, have a yellowish black skin very much 

 wrinkled, and when soaked in water the layers swell up into a 

 cloudy mass. But in the middle is a soft shelled seed contain- 

 ing the cotyledons, the taste of which is sweetish." The drug 

 is also found in Siam, where the tree is called Boa-tam-pai- 

 jang^ Poi{}igfarai\ and Bungtalai. The leaves examined by 

 Hanbury were about five inches long, simple, entire, ovate- 

 acuminate, and glabrous on both surfaces. The fruits are about 

 an inch long, ovoid, and without a pedicle, the cicatrix left by 

 the dark-brown, deeply-wrinkled fruit being very conspicuous 

 and curiously oblique, with a kind of spur. The thin, dry 

 epidermis being removed, reveals a dry, black mesocarp, within 

 which is the central seed, consisting of the two shrunken 

 cotyledons. When the fruit is put into water for some few 

 hours, the thin epidermis peels off, and the dark mesocarp 

 swells up into a very large, tasteless mass of gelatine showing 

 all the wrinkles of the fruit, and imparting a dark tint to the 

 water. This is due to the bassorine contained in the pericarp. 

 Sir R. H. Schomburgk was told that where the trees grow by 

 a roadside and the fruits drop on the road abundantly, after a 

 hard rain there will be such a mass of glutinous jelly formed 

 that the passage of the road by travellers is a matter of dif- 



