564 EUPHORBIACE^. 



valued at £16,482. The exports from the Bahamas were G76 cwt. in 

 1875, and 1,003 cwt. in 1876. 



Uses — Cascarilla is prescribed as a tonic, usually in the form of 

 a tincture or infusion. 



Adulteration— A spurious cascarilla bai-k has lately been noticed in 

 the London market ; it was imported from the Bahamas mixed with the 

 genuine, to which it bears a close similarity. The quills of it resemble 

 the larger quills of cascarilla ; though covered with a lichen, the latter 

 has not the silvery whiteness of the Vei^rucaria of cascarilla. The 

 spurious bark has a suberous coat that does not split off; its inner 

 surface is pinkish-brown, and distinctly striated longitudinall3^ In 

 microscopic structure the bark may be said to resemble cascarilla and 

 still more copalchi. But it is at once distinguishable by its numerous 

 roundish groups of sclerenchymatous cells, which become very evident 

 when thin sections are moistened with ammonia, and then with solution 

 of iodine in iodide of potassium. The bark has an astringent taste, 

 without bitterness or aroma ; its tincture is not rendered milky by 

 addition of water, but is darkened by ferric chloride, — in these respects 

 differing from a tincture of cascarilla. Mr. Holmes^ suggests that this 

 spurious cascarilla is probably the bark of Groton lucidus L. 



Copalchi Bark ; Quina blanca of the Mexicans. 



This drug is derived from Croton niveus^ Jacquin (C. Pseudo-China 

 Schlechtendal), a shrub growing 10 feet high, native of the West Indian 

 Islands, Mexico, Central America, New Granada and Venezuela. It has 

 occasionally been imported into Europe, in quills a foot or two in length, 

 much stouter and thicker than those of cascarilla, to which in odour and 

 taste it nearly approximates. The bark has a thin, greyish, paper}'- 

 suberous layer, which when removed shows the surface marked with 

 minute transverse pits, like the lines made by a file ; it has a short 

 fracture.' 



Copalchi bark was examined by J. Eliot Howard,^ and found to con- 

 tain a minute proportion of a bitter alkaloid soluble in ether, which 

 resembled quinine in yielding a deep green colour when treated Avith 

 chlorine and ammonia, though it did not afford any characteristic com- 

 pound with iodine. Mauch," who also analysed the bark, could not obtain 

 from it any organic base. He extracted by distillation the essential oil, 

 which he found to consist of a hydrocarbon and an organic acid, — the 

 latter not examined ; he likewise got from the bark an uncrystallizable 

 bitter principle, which proved to be not a glucoside. 



1 Pharm. Journ. iv. (1874) 810. Schlagdenhauffen, Journ. de Pharm. S8 



-De Candolle's Prodromus, xv. part 2. (1878)248. 



(1862) 518; beautifully figured in Hayue, * Pharm Journ. xiv. (1855) 319. 



Arzneiijewuchse, xiv. (ISi^) plate 2. ^ Wittstein's Vierieljarhresschri/t fiir 



^ For more particulars see Oberlin and praht. Pharm. xviii. (1869) 161. 



