NOTES ON CHINESE MATERIA MEDICA. 267 



flowers of Rhus, but never anything which I could trace to Dis- 1860-62. 

 tylium. 3. By the completely different form of the galls of the 

 Distylium, as figured by Siebold and Zuccarini in their Flora 

 Japonica^ tab. 94. 



Chinese galls (so-called) have lately been imported from 

 Japan ; they are somewhat smaller than those shipped from 

 China, but appear to be produced by the same tree. 



*$[ ^3 -f* Mtih-sMh-tsze ; Galls of Quercus sp. (Amenta- M&h-shih-tsze. 

 cece) ; Pun-tsaou, Fig. 756. 



These do not differ from the galls of Quercus infectoria, Oliv., 

 the common Aleppo galls of Europe, mentioned as an import 

 into China, in 1514, see Barbosa, also Porter Smith. 



5x * Fuh-ling ; Pachyma Cocos, Fries (Fungi) ; Lycoperdon 

 solidum, Gronovius; Pe ft lim, Cleyer, Med. Simp., No. 189; 

 Tatarinov, Cat. Med. Sinen*., pp. 2-23 ; Pun-tsaou, Fig. 822 ; 

 Indian Bread, or Tuckahoe. 1 



A very remarkable substance resembling large, ponderous, 

 rounded tubers, having a rough, blackish -brown, bark-like 

 exterior, and consisting internally of a compact mass of consider- 

 able hardness, varying in colour from cinnamon-brown to pure 

 white. These tuberiform bodies which in weight vary from a 

 few ounces up to several pounds, are found attached to the roots 

 of fir-trees, or sometimes buried in the ground in localities where 

 firs no longer grow. They occur in South Carolina, in some of 

 the northern and western provinces of China, and in Japan. 

 Their true nature is sufficiently perplexing. The older writers, 

 as Martinius and Cleyer, considered them to be a sort of China 



i Fuh-ling. Consult a paper by Paravey Sur I'Origine du Succin, du 

 Fouling, et Truffes diverses . . . Bordeaux, Soc, Linn, actes xvii., (1851) 

 40-53. 



P. Champion finds Pachyma Cocos to yield a substance which he has 

 named Pachymose ; it is insoluble in water, soluble in potash, and forms 

 insoluble compounds with salts of lead or lime. Treated with warm hydro- 

 chloric acid it reduces potassio tartrate of copper, and in presence of fuming 

 nitric acid it forms a very combustible compound, which detonates like gun- 

 cotton when struck. Its composition corresponds to the formula C 10 H 24 14 . 

 Abstracted from Comp. Rend. Ixxv., 1526, in Journ. of Chem. Soc., March 

 1873, p. 283. 



