64 
NAT. ORDER. PAPILIONACEjE. 
alse, compressed, and at the apex furnished on each side with a 
short, concave spur ; the filaments are ten, nine of which are united 
at the base, alternately longer and shorter ; the former are four times 
the breadth of the others, and supplied with incumbent anthers, but 
the anthers of the latter are placed vertically ; the germen is oblong, 
villous, and supports a slender style, about the length of the fila- 
ments, terminated by a small orbicular stigma ; the fruit is an oblong 
pod, in the form of the letter /, four or five inches in length, covered 
with brown, bristly hairs, and containing four, five or six seeds, of a 
brownish color. The flowers appear in September and October. 
The plant known by the name of Cow-itch, Couhage, and 
Cowhage, is referred by Bergius and Miller to the Dolichos urens of 
Linnaeus ; and this error is also to be found in Aiton's Hortus Kev- 
easis. The pods of both Dolichos urens and Dolichos pruriens, are 
beset with setaceous hairs ; but of the former these are shorter, and 
very thinly scattered over the pod, which is keel-shaped, much 
longer, and more than twice the breadth of that of the latter, and 
marked transversely with deep furrows. These circumstances show 
that the Doliches urens is widely different from the officinal Cowhage 
here figured, which is a native of both Indies, and appears to have 
been cultivated in England in the time of Ray, by Mr. Charles Hat- 
ton ; and it is even at this time found growing in many of the gar- 
dens throughout England ; but we cannot learn that it has ever been 
known to produce perfect flowers in our gardens, or even the green- 
houses. 
The sharp hairs of the pod readily penetrate the skin, and cause 
a very troublesome itching — a mischievous purpose, to which in this 
country they have been long chiefly converted. But the violent irri- 
tation which these produce upon the external skin, has not deterred 
practitioners from administering them internally, especially in the 
West Indies, where they have been generally employed for many 
-/ears as a safe and efficacious anthelmintic ; and, with a view to this 
