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SELECTTD ARTICLES. 
not the most numerous. But if, instead of examining the 
fecula in the form of ground meal, it be examined as procured 
from the young grain, and at a period when the perisperm is 
still milky, the grains present another aspect; they are per- 
fectly spherical, shining and entire, so that the proportions being 
preserved, it appears to me evident that more fecula would 
be obtained by expression of the seeds, taken a little in 
advance of maturity, than by grinding the dried seeds. For 
the entire and unbroken grains fall to the bottom of the 
liquid by the first method; whilst by the second, from being 
altered, broken, and torn by the mill, they yield their soluble 
substances to water, and remain suspended in the liquid, with 
the levity of simple integuments. This is the reason that 
Parmentier, who has employed the second method to analyze 
maize, obtained so little fecula from its farina, {Mem. sur It 
mats, Bordeaux, 1785.) 
Fecula of the Orchis. Salep. 
( Orchis morio, mascula, pyramidalis, latifolia, conopsea, 
malculata, L., besides other indigenous species of Orchis.) 
For more than twenty-four years, the French authors upon 
the Materia Medica have recommended indigenous salep as an 
excellent succedaneum for Asiatic salep. It is obtained by 
washing the tubercles of the Orchis in fresh water, stringing 
them like beads, and boiling them from twenty to thirty 
minutes; that is, until they commence to be reduced to muci- 
lage; they are then withdrawn from the water, and dried in 
the sun, or by a stove. Within a short time, a discussion 
arose among the members of the section of Pharmacy of the 
School of Medicine; Vauquelin asserting that the tubercles 
of the Orchis contain an abundance of fecula; while Robiquet, 
on the contrary, declared that he could not find even traces of 
it; and since it is impossible to mistake the characters of the 
fecula in mass, and as both authorities are equally remarkable 
for the spirit of exactitude with which they proceed in all 
their researches, we are naturally led to conclude that the 
same organ might contain fecula, or in the same species be 
