Amju°iS'i89ofrm'}  Botanical  Origin  of  Pharmacopocial  Drugs.  J23 
But  X.  caribaeum,  Lamarck,  is  now  recognized  as  entirely  distinct 
from  the  Hercules  club  ;  it  is  the  satinwood  of  semitropical  Florida 
and  the  West  Indies,  and  the  following  synonyms  are  given  by  Prof. 
Sargent :  X.  Clava-Herculis,  Linn'e,  in  part  (also  De  Candolle, 
Prodromus  and  Grisebach,  Flora  of  the  West  Indian  Islands) ;  X. 
lanceolatum,  Poiret,  and  X.  floridanum,  Nuttall.  According  to 
Chapman's  Flora  of  the  Southern  United  States,  its  branches  and 
petioles  are  unarmed. 
To  what  extent  the  barks  of  these  evidently  closely  related  species 
acree,  it  is  impossible  to  say  in  the  absence  of  well  authenticated 
specimens.  But  it  should  be  stated  that  for  some  years  past  the 
southern  prickly  ash  of  our  market  has  to  some  extent  differed  in 
macroscopic  appearance  from  that  formerly  seen,  the  chief  differ- 
ence being  the  reduced  number  or  almost  total  absence  of  the  stout 
spines  with  which  the  branches  of  our  southern  plant  are  armed, 
they  being  replaced  by  numerous  large  conical  corky  excrescences. 
Since  the  anatomical  structure  does  not  differ  materially  from  that 
of  the  bark  formerly  met  with,  it  is  not  unlikely  that'  the  present 
bark  may  be  derived  exclusively  from  the  trunk  and  older  branches. 
I  hope  to  soon  procure  authentic  botanical  specimens,  when  this 
question  may  be  definitely  settled.  If  the  opinion  expressed  here 
be  the  correct  explanation,  it  would  appear  that  the  present 
gatherers  of  southern  prickly  ash  bark  were  not  as  considerate  as 
those  of  thirty  or  forty  years  ago  when  the  bark  of  the  branches  was 
exclusively  or  chiefly  collected  ;  such  a  course  did  not  destroy  the 
tree,  which  must  necessarily  be  the  case  if  the  trunk  itself  be  stripped 
of  its  bark. 
But  another  interesting  question  arises  in  connection  with  the 
nomenclature  adopted  by  the  new  edition  of  the  Manual,  and  in 
view  of  the  results  obtained  by  chemical  analysis.  The  southern 
prickly  ask  bark  was  chemically  investigated  by  Geo.  H.  Colton 
(Amer.  Jour.  Phar.,  1880,  p.  191),  E.  T.  Moffitt  (ibid.,  1886,  p.  417) 
and  E.  G.  Eberhardt  (ibid.,  1890,  p.  231),  who  established  the 
presence  of  an  alkaloid,  which,  however,  does  not  show  any  simi- 
larity with  berberine.  This  latter  alkaloid  was  isolated  by  J.  D. 
Perrins  nearly  thirty  years  ago  (ibid.,  1863,  p.  459)  from  the  bark 
of  the  Caribbean  X.  Clava-Herculis,  Lin  ,  and  had  been  described  by 
Chevallier  and  Pelletan  as  early  as  1826  under  the  name  of  Xantho- 
picrite.    Mr.  Perrins'  bark  was  furnished  by  Daniel  Hanbury,  and 
