August 13,1870.] 
TIIE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
125 
WATER CHESTNUTS, 
BY M. C. COOKE. 
The name of “ water chestnuts ” has been applied to 
the fruits of several species of Trap a, aquatic plants be¬ 
longing to the Natural Order Haloragacese, of which the 
European species, Trapa natans, the “ Marron d’Eau” of 
the French, is said to have furnished part of the food of 
the ancient Thracians. The three principal Oriental 
species, if all are really distinct, are— 
Trapa iicornis, L.—Nuts with two opposite, recurved, 
very obtuse horns. The Lin-ko of the Chinese. A 
native of China, where it is carefully cultivated in lakes, 
ponds, and other receptacles of water. 
Trapa bispinosa , Roxb. (fig. 1).—Nuts with two oppo¬ 
site, straight, barbed, spinous horns. The Singhara of 
Fig. 1. Trapa bispinosa, Roxb. 
India. Cultivated in Bengal and other parts of India 
as high as Kashmir. 
Trapa quadrispinosa , Roxb.—Nuts with two opposite 
pairs of straight, acute, spinous horns. A native of 
Sylhet, where it is found floating on lakes and pools of 
fresh water. 
All these species are esculent, consisting chiefly of 
starch, but it is to the Singhara nut, Trapa bispinosa, 
that most of our observations will apply. 
We learn from Colonel Sleeman that the water chest¬ 
nut is everywhere as regularly planted and cultivated 
in fields, under a large surface of water, as wheat and 
barley are on the dry plains. It is cultivated by a class 
of men called Dheemurs, who are everywhere fishermen 
and palanquin-bearers, and they keep boats for the 
planting, weeding, and gathering the Singhara. The 
holdings or tenements of each cultivator are marked out 
■carefully on the surface of the water by long bamboos 
stuck up in it, and they pay so much the acre for the 
portion they till. The long straws of the plants reach 
up to the surface of the water, upon which float their 
green leaves, and their pure white flowers expand beau¬ 
tifully among them in the latter part of the afternoon. 
The nut grows under the water after the flowers decay, 
and is of a triangular shape, and covered with a tough 
brown integument. 
The people are very fond of these nuts, which are 
often carried upon bullocks’ backs two or three hundred 
miles to market. They ripen in the latter end of the 
rains, or in September, and are eatable till the end of 
November. The rent paid for an ordinary tank by the 
cultivator is about 100 rupees a year. Sometimes 200 
rupees is paid for a very large one, and even 300, or £30 
a year. But the mud increases so rapidly from this cul¬ 
tivation that it soon destroys all reservoirs in which it 
is permitted, and where it is thought desirable to keep 
up the tank for the sake of the water, it should be care¬ 
fully prohibited. 
Dr. Stewart says that in Kashmir, miles of the lakes 
and marshes are covered with this plant. The fruit is 
said to yield the Government of Kashmir £12,000 of 
annual income. Moorcroft states that Runjeet Sing 
derived nearly the same share. From 96,000 to 128,000 
loads of this nut are yielded annually by the lake of 
Ooller alone. In the valley it furnishes almost the only 
food of 30,000 people for five months in the year. 
The seeds contain a great quantity of fecula, and are 
eaten by the natives, either boiled or roasted; when 
boiled they are said to resemble a chestnut. The seed 
is also ground into a coarse flour, and cakes are made 
therefrom. The Chinese species is similarly employed 
in that country. 
The flattened, triangular kernel of this nut or seed is 
from three-quarters to 
an inch in diameter, 
and about a quarter of 
an inch in thickness, 
internally white and 
friable, externally co¬ 
vered by a thin adhe¬ 
rent brownish skin. 
Almost the whole of its 
substance consists of 
regular, oval or ellip¬ 
tical starch granules 
(fig. 2), with a central 
crack or hilum, some¬ 
times stellate in round- 
of the starch granules, their regularity, and the character 
of the hilum, are sufficient to distinguish them from any 
others that we have seen. 
In India the natives consider these nuts cooling, and 
that they cure bilious affections and diarrhoea. They 
are also used to form poultices. The red powder which 
is so freely used at the Hooly festival is made from the 
starch of these nuts, coloured red with the flowers of 
Butea frondosa or Carthamus tinctorius. The drug palled 
“sweet hermodactyls,” or Surinjan shirin , found in the 
bazaars of India, consists chiefly of the kernels of Trapa 
bispinosa , and sometimes they are also mixed with Bu¬ 
rin j an talk , or “bitter hermodactyls,” as an adulteration. 
NOTES ON CHALYBEATE WATERS. 
BY JOHN MACPHERSON, M.D. 
The following notes, though made with the view of 
determining the relative value of the strong Harrogate 
chalybeate, of which so much has been of late heard, are 
of a general nature, and may be useful at this season of 
the year. 
There are exceedingly few mineral waters that contam 
chloride of iron in solution. Nay, it is usually supposed 
that chlorine has been erroneously assigned to iron by 
chemists, whose analyses of waters would show the pre¬ 
sence of its chloride. Besides some waters in Java being 
said to contain chloride of iron, that salt has also been 
assigned to the following ones, and in the following 
proportions in the Prussian pint:—- 
Harrogate. Alexisbad. 
Bukowina. 
gr- 
gr- 
gr- 
Chloride of iron . . . 
. 1*6 
1-083 
0-920 
Carbonate of iron. . . 
. 1*27 
— 
0-003 
Sulphate of iron . . . 
• 
0-574 
1-966 
Total iron. 
. 2-87 
1-657 
2-889 
Total mineral constituents 
. 49-69 
4-876 
6-220 
Carbonic acid .... 
. 2-8 in. 
traces 
none 
These three are, therefore, undoubtedly strong iron 
springs; but there are others stronger, without including 
the almost poisonous vitriol ones, as they have been 
called ; for instance,— 
Wassenach. 
Parad. 
Muskau. 
gr- 
gr- 
gr- 
Carbonate of iron . . 
. 3-08 
4-8 
l"38o 
Sulphate of iron . . . 
• 
— 
1-526 
Total iron. 
. 3-08 
4-8 
2-911 
Total mineral constituents 
. 12-9 
12-4 
8-673 
Carbonic acid .... 
• trflCGS 
26 in. 
traces 
