187 CONYOLYULUS SCAMMONIA 



by the dealers who purchase it for that purpose of the peasants 

 in a half-dried state. The substances most frequently used as 

 adulterants are carbonate of lime and wheat-flour ; but wood- 

 ashes, sand, gum, tragacanth, powdered scammony roots, common 

 resin, gypsum, black-lead, and other substances are also employed 

 for the purpose. 



Scammony is chiefly exported from Smyrna, and from the 

 province of Aleppo, although in the consular returns of the Aleppo 

 market for 1875, scammony does not appear at all. In former 

 times Aleppo Scammony was regarded as the best kind ; but 

 Smyrna Scammony is now much preferred to it, and is therefore 

 of higher commercial value. Scammony is generally shipped in 

 small cases containing about thirty pounds each. 



General Characters and Composition. The best kind of scam- 

 mony namely, that which is simply the pure juice dried as soon 

 as it is collected is in more or less flattened or amorphous 

 pieces, of from about half an inch to an inch in thickness. In 

 mass it has a somewhat chestnut-brown colour, but when reduced 

 to small fragments, these are of a pale yellowish- or somewhat 

 reddish-brown colour, and transparent. The pieces are very 

 brittle, and when broken the fractured surface presents a shining 

 vitreous appearance, and has but few or no air cavities. It 

 yields from 88 to 90 per cent., or more, of resin. Scammony of 

 this quality is, however, but rarely met with, the ordinary 

 best commercial scammony being that which we have already 

 noticed under the name of Virgin Scammony, the charac- 

 ters of which are as follows : In flattish cakes or amorphous 

 pieces, of an ash-grey or somewhat blackish colour externally, 

 and sometimes covered with a greyish-white powder from the 

 lumps rubbing against each other. It is very brittle, and is 

 readily reduced to fragments by the pressure of the nail, or 

 between the fingers. Its powder is of an ash-grey colour, and 

 when triturated with water it forms a smooth emulsion ; and the 

 cooled decoction is not rendered blue by solution of iodine, 

 indicating the absence of starchy substances. Its fresh fractured 

 surface is resinous, shining, of a uniform dark greyish-black 



