428 



Notices of Books. 



[Oct. 



is so of some part of Asia. It appears to be wild in the Himalayas. 

 The Arabic name kinnub is thought to have been corrupted into the 

 Dutch hennep, whence we no doubt have our hemp ; kinnabis is given 

 as its Greek name by the eastern writers on Materia Medica ; bunj 

 as Persian ; and bhung and bhang as Hindee. It is said by Herodotus 

 to have been made into cloth by the Thracians, and is now well known 

 to be extensively cultivated in Italy, Poland, and Russia to the south 

 of Moscow, with a small quantity only in England. It requires a rich 

 soil and moist situation 5 is pulled when in flower, if the fibre alone be 

 required, but if the seed also, then the male plants are pulled as soon 

 as they have shed their pollen, and the others when the seed is ripe. 

 These yield oil, which is employed by painters, or they are used for 

 feeding poultry ; so that every part of the plant is turned to some ac- 

 count. The leaves are sometimes smoked in India, and occasionally 

 added to tobacco, but are chiefly employed for making bhang, and sub- 

 zee, of which the intoxicating powers are so well known. But a peculiar 

 substance is yielded by the plants in the hills, in the form of a glandu- 

 lar secretion, which is collected by the natives pressing the upper part 

 of the growing plant between the palms of their hands, and then scrap- 

 ing off the secretion which adheres. This is well known in India by 

 the name cherris and is considered more intoxicating than any other 

 preparation of this plant, which is so highly esteemed by many 

 Asiatics, serving them both for wine and opium ; it has in consequence 

 a variety of names applied to it in Arabic, some of which were translat- 

 ed to me, as ' grass of fuqueers,' — ' leaf of delusion,' — 4 increaser of 

 pleasure,' — ' exciter of desire,' — 1 cementer of friendship,' &c. Lin- 

 neus was well acquainted with its ' vis narcotica, phantastica, demen- 

 tens.' It is as likely as any other to have been the Nepenthes of 

 Homer. Besides kinnabis, it has defroonus assigned as a Greek name. 



" It is interesting to find in the same family with the hemp, the Urtica 

 tenacissima or Calooee of Marsden, Rami of the Malays, a native of 

 Sumatra, also of Rungpore, where it is called kunkomis, and which 

 Dr. Roxburgh found one of the strongest of all the vegetable fibres, 

 which he subjected to experiment. Average weight with which lines 

 made of the different substances broke, were, Asclepias tenacissima, 

 Jeteeoi the Rajmahl mountaineers, 248 ; Urtica tenacissima, Calooee,, 

 240; the strongest Sunn, Crotolaria juncea, 160. Hemp, Cannabis 

 sativa, grown in the year 1800, in the Company's Hemp Farm near 

 Calcutta, 158, but much stronger when tanned. Europe hemp, how- 

 ever, was always found stronger than Sunn, though not more so than 

 the others. Dr. Roxburgh speaks of the beauty, fineness, and softness 

 of the fibre of this plant, and says, he learnt from a friend resident at 

 Canton, that the grass-cloth of China is made of this material. It is 

 cultivated in Sumatra for the fibres of its bark. The Malays use it for 



