Am.  Jour.  Pharrn. } 
November,  1897.  / 
Soy  Bean. 
585 
While  not  adding  anything  new  to  the  knowledge  of  the  digestive 
ferment,  still  there  is  so  much  valuable  information  in  the  report  as 
to  make  it  desirable  to  reproduce  it  in  abstract. 
General  Characteristics  and  Origin. — The  Soy  Bean,  Glycine  his- 
pida,  previously,  but  incorrectly,  called  soja  bean,  is  a  leguminous 
Soy  bean  :  «,  flowering  branch  (reduced  %);  b,  one  of  the  flowers 
(enlarged);  c,  pods  of  soy  bean  (reduced  %), 
plant,  native  of  Southeastern  Asia.  De  Candolle  says  that  it  orig- 
inally occurred  in  the  wild  state  in  the  region  "  from  Cochin  China 
to  the  south  of  Japan  and  to  Java."  It  has  been  cultivated  from 
very  ancient  times,  and  in  some  countries,  notably  Japan,  it  is  a  very 
important  food  plant,  and  its  cultivation  has  reached  such  an 
