544  The  Apocynacece  in  Materia  Medica.  {K™^^£^X: 
of  the  seed,  and  concluded  wrongly  that  the  embryo  contained  the 
fatty  oil  and  the  strophanthine,  while  the  albumen  contained  but 
the  oil.  In  the  good  kinds,  the  albumen  gives  almost  immedi- 
ately a  bright  green  (occasionally  at  first  blue),  the  cotyledons  a 
green  very  much  less  intense.  Then  the  color  passes  from  a  bluish 
to  a  red,  and  finally,  paling  gradually  to  a  gray  with  greenish  streaks, 
etc.  In  the  poorer  kinds,  the  albumen  gives  a  green  and  the  em- 
bryo becomes  green  solely  in  or  under  the  epidermis  or  around  the 
fascicles,  and  it  is  the  laticiferous  vessels  which  become  so  colored. 
In  other  sorts,  neither  the  embryo  nor  the  albumen  become  green, 
but  a  red,  or  sometimes  a  yellow  or  brown,  due  to  the  action  of  the 
acid  upon  the  oil  or  aleurone.  This  reaction  may  be  utilized  for 
distinguishing  products  in  appearance  very  similar. 
Hartwich  also  notes  a  remarkable  relation  between  the  presence 
of  calcium  oxalate  and  that  of  Strophanthine,  which  it  seems  to  ex- 
clude. In  two  sorts  alone  neither  are  seen,  in  one  only  (and  which 
everywhere  appears  very  peculiar  by  its  characters),  is  found  con- 
stantly the  coexistence  of  small  isolated  crystals  of  oxalate  with  a 
trace  of  Strophanthine.  Throughout  the  others  macles  of  oxalate 
are  abundant  in  the  embryos  destitute  of  Strophanthine. 
Strophanthus  hispidus,  A.  P.  D.  C,  the  Strophanthus  hirta,  Poir. 
This  is  the  species  which  for  a  long  time,  and  wrongly,  was  given 
in  Europe  the  name  of  Inee.  The  geographic  distribution  of  S.  his- 
pid us  is  really  very  great,  because  it  must  probably  be  admitted  that 
the  S.  Kombe  is  one  form  of  S.  hispidus,  and  Blondel  shows  that 
these  modifications  of  the  type  resembling  a  variety  extend  little 
by  little  to  the  West  and  to  the  East  across  the  African  Continent. 
But,  in  materia  medica,  it  is  important  to  distinguish  these  two 
forms,  not  solely  by  their  morphological  and  chemical  characters, 
but  also  by  their  habitat.  The  limit  of  the  species  is  from  the  Cayor, 
near  St.  Louis,  as  far  as  the  back  of  the  Gulf  of  Guinea,  near  the  Old 
Calabar  River.  We  may  not  affirm  at  present  that  the  plant  extends 
much  towards  the  interior  of  the  country.  It  seems,  however,  to 
meet  with  the  S.  Kombe  in  the  Nyanza  region.  Botanically,  it  is  a 
sarmentose  bush,  with  the  branches  trailing.  It  inhabits  the  ditches 
or  the  moist  parts  always  near  the  large  trees.  The  young  branches 
are  covered  everywhere,  but  especially  upon  the  inflorescences  and 
the  leaves,  with  rigid  hairs,  yellowish-white  and  with  a  bulbiform 
