PROFESSOR BALFOUR ON THE ASAFCTIDA PLANT. 963 
(all of which are in the Materia Medica Museum of the University), and on exami- 
nation lam disposed, with Dr Fatconrr, to look upon the former as distinct 
from the latter. The fruits of the plants in the Botanic Garden agree completely 
with those sent by Dr Fatconer, and differ somewhat from those sent by Sir 
JoHN M‘NEILL. 
In 1840 another locality was found for this Asafoetida plant, by the expedi- 
tion of Lieutenant Woop to the sources of the Oxus. This is situated in Syghan 
near the western termination, and on the northern slope of the Hindoo Koosh 
range of mountains, about twenty miles north of Bameean. Burnes, in his “Travels 
into Bokhara,” vol. ii. p. 248, says:—“ At an elevation of 7000 feet, on Hindoo 
Koosh, we found the Asafcetida plant flourishing in great luxuriance. It grows 
to the height of eight or ten feet, when it withers and decays. The milk which 
exudes is first white, and then turns yellow and hardens, in which state it is put 
into hair bags and exported. In the fresh state it has an abominable smell, yet 
our fellow-travellers greedily devoured it.” 
The seeds sent to the Edinburgh Botanic Garden were carefully reared by the 
late Mr Witt1am M‘Nap, the superintendent. In 1842 these seeds germinated, 
but the shoots merely appeared above ground, and then seemed to die. Mr M‘Nas, 
however, did not give them up for lost. He would not allow the earth under 
the frame to be dug up, and determined to give them another year’s trial. Ac- 
cordingly, next summer new shoots appeared, and from them the stock of plants 
in the garden has been derived. Ever since that time the plants have sent up a 
vigorous crown of leaves in early spring, but these have withered by midsummer, 
and without any symptoms of flowering. The crown of the root, however, con- 
tinued to increase annually, and in some of the specimens it attained a diameter 
of four inches or more. Year after year the flowering of the plants was looked 
for; but this event did not take place till 1858, when two plants which had been 
transplanted in the spring of 1857 showed, very early in spring, evidence of 
pushing up a flowering axis. Dr Fautconer, who saw the plants some years 
before, thought that the delay in flowering might be caused by the too luxuriant 
growth of the roots, and he suggested that the process might be accelerated 
by cutting the roots. It is probable that the warm summer of 1857 tended to 
mature the plants and increase their vigour. The flowering plants did not, as in 
previous years, produce large radical leaves. The shoots sent up by them con- 
sisted entirely of an axis covered by large yellowish-green membranous sheaths, 
which speedily reached a height of from one to two feet. Flowering branches 
then began to show themselves in the axils of these sheaths, which are 
enlarged petioles or pericladia embracing the stems and covering the flower- 
buds. In the lower part of the axis, the sheaths produced at their extremity 
peeony-like leaves, much smaller than the ordinary stem leaves. The size of the 
leaf-laminze diminished in proceeding upwards; and finally, leafless sheaths were 
