416 
Burdock  as  a  Vegetable. 
f  A.111.  Jour.  Pharm. 
I      August,  1897. 
Tests  for  hydrocyanic  acid  and  emulsin,  though  successfully 
carried  out  upon  bitter  almonds  as  first  tried  by  Guignard,3  failed  of 
results  when  tried  with  the  barks  of  Primus  serotma. 
Wellesley,  Mass.,  May,  1897. 
BURDOCK  AS  A  VEGETABLE.1 
By  Inazo  Nitobe. 
The  well-known  definition  of  a  weed  by  Emerson  as  "  a  plant 
whose  virtues  have  not  yet  been  discovered,"  is  confirmed  by  the 
better  agricultural  authority  of  Schwerz,  according  to  whom  "  a 
weed  is  a  plant  of  which  the  direct  uses  are  unknown  to  man." 
Both  the  poet-philosopher  and  the  scientific  farmer  implicitly 
admit,  I  think,  that  as  man  brings  more  and  more  of  nature  under 
his  control — in  other  words,  as  he  brings  more  and  more  plants 
under  cultivation,  many  of  them,  hitherto  scorned  as  weeds,  must 
cease  to  be  considered  as  such.  I  have  often  seen  ridiculed  the 
Chinese  custom  of  eating  birds'  nests,  bears'  claws  and  other  in- 
comprehensible delicacies,  but  I  cannot  help  admiring  the  power  of 
pantophagy  on  the  one  hand  and  the  refinement  £>f  culinary  skill  on 
the  other,  which  can  convert  into  means  of  human  enjoyment  things 
apparently  worthless  and  revolting.  If,  as  philosophers  say,  civili- 
zation consists  mainly  in  bringing  natural  forces  under  man's  sub- 
jection, China  must  be  given  a  high  place  in  the  scale  of  civilization 
from  a  culinary  point  of  view. 
Is  it  not  a  real  triumph  of  art  to  extract  food  for  man  from  so 
coarse  and  ugly  a  weed  as  burdock  ?  Most  books  on  botany  in  the 
English  tongue  describe  burdock,  Lappa  major  or  officinalis,  as  a 
pestiferous  weed,  and  many  an  agricultural  bulletin  gives  careful 
instruction  how  to  destroy  it.  Perhaps  the  only  use  that  has  been 
made  of  Lappa  in  America  is  for  medicine.  The  root  contains  a 
bitter  principle,  a  resin  and  tannin,  and  it  is  said  to  have  an  aperient 
and  diuretic  effect.  It  also  has  some  reputation  as  an  alterative  in 
constitutional  blood  diseases,  and  the  readers  of  Garden  and  Forest 
may  have  used  the  so-called  **  burdock  tea."  In  Germany,  where 
the  three  species,  L.  major,  L.  minor,  L.  tomentosa,  are  widely 
3  Guignard.    Sur.  la  localisation  dans  les  plantes,  des  principes  qui  fournsi- 
sent  l'acide  cyanhydrique.    Comptes  rendus,  1890,  p.  249. 
1  Garden  and  Forest,  10,  143. 
