NOTES ON CHINESE MATERIA MEDICA. 247 



FIG. 10. Two berries, natural size ; berry magnified, and transverse 

 i ; cotyledon with radicle (magnified). 



section of ditto ; 



no specimen in fact, it is apparently unknown to recent 

 botanists. Loureiro describes its fruit as " Bacca globosa, nigra, 

 pedunculata, minima : semine globoso." He adds that the 

 berries are strengthening, cephalic, stomachic, and carminative, 

 and that in decoction they are useful in vertigo, hysterical 

 affections, paralysis, melancholy, and impaired memory pro- 

 perties which are possessed by the bark, though to a less degree. 

 The fresh fruits are used for the preserving of fish. The odour 

 of the berries is fragrant, their taste is aromatic and somewhat 

 pungent, and occasions a flow of saliva. They have the size, 

 form, and colour of black pepper. Each berry is attached to 

 a slender, rather long pedicel, whence they might be called not 

 inappropriately Piper caudatum. 



with its cartilaginous, shining brown testa surrounded, longi- 

 tudinaily by a narrow ridge. The cotyledons are hemispherical, 

 thick, and oily ; the radicle superior. 



In endeavouring to assign a botanical origin to this drug Botanical 

 I have been guided chiefly by two considerations : 1, The 2)ap^fdiu 

 evident laurineous structure of the berries. 2, Their superficial Cubeba. 

 resemblance to cubebs. Turning to Loureiro's Flora Cochin- 

 chinensis, we find, under the name Laurus Cubeba, a tree described, 

 the fruit of which so remarkably coincides with the drug under 

 notice, that I cannot but conclude the two are identical. This 

 tree was transferred by Nees ab Esenbeck, in his Sy sterna 

 Laurinarum, to the genus Daphnidium, but he borrowed the 

 description of it from Loureiro, and had evidently examined 



