Am.  Jour.  Pharm. } 
January,  1895.  / 
The  Apocynacece  in  Materia  Medica. 
4* 
Each  follicle  is  30  to  35  cm.  in  length,  strongly  ligneous  and  very 
thick.  The  exterior  surface  is  brown  or  reddish,  with  oval  lenticels. 
In  its  commercial  form,  it  is  bound  with  the  leaf  of  a  palm.  The 
endocarp  is  fusiform,  swollen  about  the  middle  3  to  4  cm.  in  dia- 
meter. The  color  externally  is  yellowish  to  brownish  yellow.  The 
surface  is  quite  smooth,  dull,  non-striated.  The  interior  surface  is 
fawn  colored,  uniform,  shiny,  with  a  brilliant  silkiness. 
The  seeds  are  much  shorter  than  the  other  species  studied.  The 
shape  of  the  isolated  seed  is  lanceolate  with  the  base  ordinarily 
rounded  or  truncated  and  the  summit  lengthily  attenuated  with  the 
margins  more  or  less  sharp,  especially  at  the  base,  oftentime  some- 
what undulated,  always  somewhat  flattened,  never  cylindrical,  the 
seeds  relatively  large  averaging  13  to  16  mm.  in  length  by  3  to 
41^  mm.  in  breadth  and  1  to  ij^  mm.  in  thickness.  The  dorsal 
face  clearly  convex,  the  ventral  flat  or  even  concave.  A  small  keel 
exists  at  times  near  the  shaft  upon  the  dorsal  face.  The  surface  of 
this  grain  is  absolutely  glabrous  and  presents  only  the  longitudinal 
plaitings.  The  color  is  an  ochre-yellow,  fawn,  or  cinnamon,  but 
often  deeper  or  greyish.  The  appearance  is  waxy,  dull,  tarnished ; 
the  fracture  is  horny,  whitish  or  gray ;  the  odor  is  especially  well 
marked;  the  taste  extremely  bitter.  It  requires  about  35  seeds 
to  weigh  1  gm.  The  naked  part  of  the  shaft  is  very  short  (about 
I  cm.)  in  comparison  with  the  plume,  which  often  attains  4  cm. 
The  hairs  of  the  same  are  sometimes  nearly  7  cm.  in  length ;  they 
are  numerous,  silky,  brilliant,  fine,  fragile,  white,  viewed  in  mass 
yellowish  or  grayish  and  diverging,  describing  a  graceful  curve. 
The  envelope  is  relatively  very  thin ;  the  albumen  thick,  cartila- 
ginous, transparent;  the  embryo  is  not  thick,  the  radicle  is  long  as 
in  the  hispidus  and  Kombc. 
On  transverse  section  the  seed  shows  first  the  external  layer  of 
the  tegument  with  the  thickened  cells  large  and  short,  a  little  larger 
petiole  and  leaves  of  two  indigenous  plants  not  determined,  etc.).  The  sub- 
stance dried,  the  arrow  is  ready.  The  effects  are  very  rapid,  and  the  game 
wounded  falls  within  the  limit  of  one  hundred  metres.  The  hunter 
hastens  then,  to  excise  with  a  knife,  all  around  the  wound,  or  better,  forces  in 
the  wound  the  juice  from  a  branch  of  Adansonia  digitata.  These  precau- 
tions taken,  the  game  maybe  eaten  with  impunity.  The  act  of  poisoning  their 
neighbor  flourishes  among  the  Gaboonese  with  all  its  splendor,  and  the  luce 
takes  the  first  rank  among  those  numerous  powders,  the  recipes  of  which  these 
savages  religiously  transmit  as  an  inheritance. 
