66 THE NEW ZEALAND FAMILY HERB DOCTOR. 
separated from the epidermis. Large quantities are collected 
in the lower peninsula of Michigan. It is in long, nearly flat 
pieces, 12 to 60 inches long and from 1 to 2 lines thick, of a 
tibrous texture and a tawny colour, which is reddish on the 
inner surface, and a peculiar, sweetish, and not unpleasant 
odour and a highly mucilaginous taste when chewed. The 
inner surface finely ridged, fracture fibrous and mealy. The 
tranverse section delicately checquered. By grinding it is 
reduced to a light grey fawn coloured powder. It abounds 
in mucilaginous matter, which it readily imparts to water. 
The mucilage is precipitated by acetate and subacetate of lead, 
but not by alcohol. Much of the bark brought into the 
market is of inferior quality, imparting comparatively little 
mucilage to water. It has the characteristic odour of the 
genuine article, but is much less fibrous and more brittle, 
breaking abruptly when bent, instead of being capable, lke 
the better kind, of being folded lengthwise without breaking. 
To what this inferiority is owing—whether to difference in 
species, or the age, or to the circumstances of the growth of 
trees producing it—.ve are unable to state.” Dr. C. W. Wright 
Cincinnati, in communicating to the Western Lancet states that 
slippery elm bark has the property of preserving fatty sub- 
stances from rancidity, a fact derived from the Indians, who 
prepared bears’ fat by melting it with the bark, in the 
proportion of a drachm of the latter to a pound of the former, 
keeping them heated together for a few minutes, and then 
straining off the fat. The same process was tried with butter 
and lard, and they were found to remain sweet for a long time. 
MEDICINAL PROPERTIES AND USES. 
Slippery elm is an excellent demulcent, applicable to all 
cases in which this class of medicine is used. It is especially 
recommended in dysentery and diarrhoea, and diseases of the 
urinary passages. Like the bark of the common Kuropean 
elm it has been employed in cutaneous eruptions, but neither 
in these nor in any other cases does it probably exert any 
greater power than demulcents generally. Its mucilage is 
nutritious, and we are told that it has proved sufficient to support 
