HERBA HYDROCOTYLES. 297 



the alcoholic extract of colocynth which is soluble in ether but not in 

 water. Purified with boiling alcohol, colocynthitiu forms a tasteless 

 crystalline powder. 



The pulp perfectly freed from seeds and dried at 100' C, afforded 

 us 11 per cent of ash; the seeds alone yield only 2-7 per cent. They 

 have, even when crushed, but a faint bitter taste, and contain 17 per 

 cent, of fat oil. 



The fresh leaves of the plant if rubbed emit a very unpleasant 

 smell. 



Commerce — The drug is imported from Mogador, Spain and Syria. 



Uses — In the form of an extract made with weak alcohol, and 

 combined with aloes and scammony, colocynth is much employed as a 

 purgative. The seeds, roasted or boiled, are the miserable food of some 

 of the poorest tribes of the Sahara.^ 



The people of the Berber upon the Nile make a curious application 

 for the tar they obtain from the fruit. The latter is heated in an 

 earthen vessel with a hole in it ; the tar drips through to another 

 vessel and is fit for smearing leather water-bags. The bad smell of the 

 tar (and of the leaves) prevents the camels from cutting open the 

 water-bags.' 



Substitutes — Ciicunms trigonus Roxb. {C. Pseudo-colocyiithis 

 Royle), a plant of the plains of Northern India, with spherical or 

 elongated, sometimes obscurely trigonous, bitter fruits, prostate rooting 

 stems, and deeply divided leaves, resembles the colocynth gourd and has 

 been mistaken for it. Another species named by Royle C. HardwicMi, 

 and known to the natives of India as Hill Colocynth, has oval 

 oblong bitter fruits, but leaves entirely unlike those of the Citrullus 

 Colocynthis. 



UMBELLIFER^. 



HERBA HYDROCOTYLES. 



Indian Hydrocotyle, Indian Pennyvjoii: ; F. Bevilacqua. 



Botanical Origin — Hydrocotyle asiatica L., a small creeping herb,^ 

 with slender jointed stems, common in moist places throughout tropical 

 Asia and Africa, ascending in Abyssinia to elevations of 6,000 feet. It 

 also occurs in America from South Carolina to Valdivia, in the West 

 Indies, the islands of the Pacific, New Zealand, and Australia, 



History — Hydrocotyle is called in Sanskrit manduka-imi-in, in 

 Hindi khidakhudi. The former name denotes various plants, but is 

 thought to refer in Susruta to the plant under notice (Dr. Rice). It 

 was known to Rheede* by its Malyalim name of Codagam (or Kutakan), 

 and also to Rumphius.^ It has been long used medicinally by the 



^ See my paper on Cucumis C'olocynthU Grant expedition, Journ. Linn. Soc. xxix. 

 considered as a nutritive plant in the pt. 2 (1S73) 77, 



Archiv der Phai-macie, 201 (1872) 235. — ^ pjg j^ Bentley and Trimen Med 



F. A. F. Plants, pt. 24, 1877. 



- Col. Grant, Botany of the Speke and * Hnrt. Mai. x. tab. 46. 



' Herb. Amhoin. v. 169. 



