September 9,1871.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
201 
SEEDS IN DRUG-PARCELS: 
EXPERIMENTS ON THEIR VITALITY AND 
CONSEQUENT USEFULNESS. 
BY G. BROWNEST. 
Iii the examination of drug-parcels for adultera¬ 
tions or worthless articles, an interesting and pro¬ 
fitable field of inquiry is often overlooked. When 
bits of stone, earth, twine, decayed or worm-eaten 
drugs, etc., are removed, our duty appears done, and 
the parcel is either used or passed into stock. 
Among the leaves, gums, barks and roots, still re¬ 
main numberless seeds of various sizes, shapes and 
Orders—a wonder and a study in themselves, which 
may aliord means for demonstrating many a page of 
Bentley’s ‘Botany’; or if a little trouble, care, or 
patience (whichever term is best) be taken with 
them, may be induced to germinate, and reward the 
efiort with plants on which the botanical pharmacist 
will certainly look with curiosity and interest. 
Last 3 ^ear, for the first time, this plan was adopted 
by me, and specimens were collected, classified as 
nearly as possible, and their vitality tested in the 
spring. 
_ From the following parcels of drugs, a great va¬ 
riety of seeds and fruits were obtained, thus:— 
Varieties. Varieties. 
Chimaphila, 
2 
From Senna, 
7 
Uva Ursi, 
2 
Serpentary, 
4 
Sumbul, 
3 
Buchu, 
3 
Anchusa, 
2 
Cusparia, 
5 
Senega, 
o 
O 
Canella, 
3 
Ammoniacum 
,4 
Coca 
1 
Chirata, 
2 
Myrrh, 
3 
Cascarilla, 
11 
Matico, 
3 
Acacia, 
10 
Kino, 
1 
Tragaeanth, 
3 
Calumba, 
6 
Cusso, 
2 
Cinchona, 
8 
Of seeds or fruits, recognized either by their struc¬ 
tural characteristics or the plants produced from 
them, were the following:— 
Linseed, coriander, ricinus, croton, coffee, fenu¬ 
greek, areca, pomegranate, papyrus, jatroplia, prunus, 
senna, buchu, dates, and myrobalans. 
Their vitality was then tested; 103 specimens 
were placed on a piece of muslin, and floated on 
water for a few hours; many of them were thus 
softened or swollen in size, they were then slightly 
covered with mould, and forced with artificial heat. 
On examining the beds when the heat had declined, 
27 were found to have germinated, and many were 
overlooked or lost. 
Such a success warranted further experiments, and 
I planted a selection, but owing to the advanced 
period of the season, several sprung up and died 
away ; others survived till the severity of last winter 
destroyed them, and I had only 3 or 4 left alive, and 
a few withered stalks of annuals for a first year’s 
produce. 
Determined to succeed, if possible, I commenced 
again this year, only unfortunately 1871 did not 
resemble 1870. Midsummer and Christmas seemed 
to have exchanged places, and this year’s success as 
yet is very small. 
As many of the seeds were known as medicinal 
articles, I determined to extend my list, and experi¬ 
ment on as many as I could find; of course, their 
numbers were greatly increased, and possibly many 
failed from want of proper attention, etc.; if, how¬ 
ever, an herbarium or a structural museum be the 
Third Series, No. 63. 
object sought, their number may be diminished, or 
successful plants need not be replanted; and failures 
sought out and understood serve as guides to suc¬ 
cess. To study, collect, or preserve a plant when its 
structural peculiarities are fully developed, or in 
operation, will render comprehensible such terms as 
aestivation, etc., quicker and more correctly than 
months of mere book study; the definitions of Scro- 
phidariacea, Labia tee, Atropacece , and Solanacea „ 
will lose their uncertainties, and be as easily sepa- 
rated in practice as in theory. 
Of the official seeds and fruits, most may be in¬ 
duced to grow even in thickly populated towns—on 
housetops or window-sills—anywhere that a pot or 
a box of mould may stand and be watered or sunned 
into life. I have seen many of them growing on a 
flat roof in one of the most tliickty populated parts of 
London; and one must be excessively hard worked 
who cannot find a few minutes, between dawn and 
dusk, to attend or watch the growth of such plants. 
Where a greenhouse or other facilities exist—with 
all due respect to common garden plants—pharma¬ 
ceutical plants comprise some of the most elegant; 
thus, stramonium, ricinus, or colocynth have elegant 
foliage ; squills, crocus, colchicum and lobelia are 
good flowering plants; ginger, turmeric and carda¬ 
moms will compare favourably with the grasses; the 
beauty of orange, pomegranate, or capsicum fruits 
is not to be despised; and roses and poppies are 
quite beyond all question. 
Many an important pliarmacopoeial plant, while 
flowering, would not be misplaced in a pharmacist’s 
shop, it would neither indicate inattention to busi¬ 
ness, nor a want of pharmaceutical knowledge. 
Official, typical, or plants having peculiar struc¬ 
tural features need not be squeezed or pressed flat as 
a passover cake, in the abnormal style of the herba¬ 
rium, whose decurrent, sessile and amplexicaul leaves 
appear most puzzlingly alike, especially to a young 
beginner. These plants may be dried, root and all if 
you like, in a mixture of 98 sand and 2 of stearine or 
any high-melting fat; in such a mixture, leaves, stalks 
and stems may be dried in their natural positions. 
These dried plants, preserved from insect ravages 
by some insecticide, or varnished, may be planted in 
a pot of dry sand, and thus show their foliation, de¬ 
hiscence, etc. They are as durable as skeleton 
plants. If they are not so beautiful as well-pressed 
specimens, they are more natural. Any one looking 
at the favourite microscopic slide, “ the tongue of 
the blow-fly,” squeezed as it is into elegance, could 
form little conception of that member as seen in situ ; 
so, in botany, a flat specimen of Hijoscyamus, Did - 
camara, or Digitalis resembles but faintly the mode 
of growth or form of those plants. 
Having such an idea of an illustrative or natural 
botanical collection, those seed and seedlings would 
be carefully attended, and, when them peculiarities 
are developed, our necessaries would be ready to dry 
them. 
Returning to medicinal seeds again, notice the 
success already obtained in scarcely two seasons. 
Fifty-nine different specimens of seeds, exclusive 
of those already mentioned as obtained from drug- 
parcels, were planted, and the following have sprung 
up since the spring of 1870 :—Dill, caraway, colchi¬ 
cum, colocynth, fig, henbane, mustard, wliite poppy, 
stramonium, tobacco, chamomile and cardamom.. 
Four other plants were obtained by the following 
methods:—First, liquorice, by planting a piece of 
