Spec. Plant. Willd. iii. 109. Cl. 14. Ord. 1. Didynamia Gymnospermia. Nat. ord. Labiatae. G. 1111. Calyx salver-shaped, rigid, ten-streaked. Corolla, upper lip bifid, linear, and straight. * * With ten-teethed calyces. Species 8. M. vulgare.2 White Horehound. Med. Bot. 2d edit.

332. 11l8. Smith, Flora Brit. 636. Eng. Bot. 410. Officinal. Marrubium, Lond. Marrubii vulgaris herba,

Edin. Marrubium vulgare, Dub. Horehound leaves.

Syn. Marrube blanc (F.), Weisser andorn (G.), Witte andoorn (Dutch), Ilvidmarru (Dan.), Andorn (Swed.), Szanta Biala (Pol.), Marrubio (I.), Ma-rubio bianco (S.), Marroyo bianco (Port.).

.1 Maranta Attonya and nobilis; M. Inclica, which, as its specific name implies, also furnishes West India arrow-root. The Curcuma angustifolia of Roxburgh supplies much of the East Indian arrow-root; and some has lately been brought from the Sandwich Islands, which is the production of the Tacca pinnatifida.

Dioscondis. Lemery says the name is derived from the Hebrew word Marrob, which means a bitter juice.

White horehound is an indigenous, perennial plant, growing in waste grounds, and flowering in July. The root is fibrous, sending up numerous stems, about eighteen inches high, quadrangular, erect, and very downy. The leaves are in pairs, upon broad foot-stalks, rounded, crenate, wrinkled, hoary, and woolly on the under surface. The flowers are white, in crowded axillary whorls, sessile, villous, and furnished with setaceous, awned bractes. The calyx is tubular, furrowed, and divided at the margin into ten narrow segments, which are hooked at their points; the corolla is tubular, compressed, opening at the mouth into two lips, the upper of which is narrow and cloven; the under broader, reflected, and three-cleft, with the middle segment broad and scalloped. The filaments are two long and two short, with simple anthers, within the tube; and the style is slender, with a cloven stigma. The seeds are four, at the bottom of the calyx.

Qualities.-Horehound dried has an aromatic odour, which, however, is soon lost by keeping, and a durable bitter taste. Both water and alcohol extract its virtues. The infusion reddens tincture of litmus, gives a deep olive-green precipitate with sulphate of iron, a brown with nitre of silver, and a pale yellow with bichloride of mercury: acetate and diacetate of lead do not affect it. The active principles of horehound, therefore, appear to be a bitter extractive, volatile oil, and gallic acid.

Medical properties and uses.-Horehound is tonic, diuretic, and laxative. It was formerly much used in pulmonary affections, and is still a popular remedy for asthma and obstinate coughs. It loosens the belly when taken in large doses, and was consequently recommended in jaundice, cachexies, menstrual obstructions, and hysteria; and although its powers are not found by modern practitioners equal to the account which the ancients gave of them, and therefore it is very seldom prescribed, yet we have seen decided advantage from its exhibition in phthisis. The dried herb may be given in powder, in doses of from 3ss. to 3j.; or of the expressed juice of the fresh plant from f ss. to f jss. may be taken twice or thrice a day. It is also used in the form of infusion.

MEL. Lond, Edin. Dub. Honey.

Syn. Miel (F.), Gemeiner Honig(G.), Honning (Dan.), Homing (Swed.), Mel (Russian), Tayn (Tarn.), Shahid (Pers.), Mele (Ital), Miel (S.), Mel (Port.), Ussub (Arab.), Medhii (H. & San.), Komagun (Bornouil), Amman (Mandara), Tejee (Begharini).

Honey is collected by bees from the nectaries1 of flowers, in which it is abundantly secreted; but it probably undergoes some change within the insect before it is excreted by it, and deposited in the comb, The flavour of honey varies according to the nature of the flowers from which it is collected : the honey of Minorca, Narbonne, and England are known by their flavours; and the honey prepared in different parts even of the same country differs.1 It is separated from the comb by dripping and by expression : the first method affords the purest sort; the second separates a less pure honey; and a still inferior kind is obtained by heating the comb before it is pressed. When obtained from young hives, which have never swarmed, it is denominated virgin honey. It is sometimes adulterated with flour, which is detected by mixing it with tepid water : the honey dissolves, while the flour remains nearly unaltered.

1 The nectary is a glandular organ of the corollas of flowers. In many flowers it forms part of the petals themselves; in others it is a distinct organ. It is not easy to assign the use of honey in the vegetable economy.

Qualities.-Honey has a peculiar saccharine aromatic odour,-and a sweet acidulous, sharp taste. In colour it varies from white or a yellowish white to a pretty deep shade of amber or golden-yellow; in consistence, from the fluidity of limpid oil to the stiffness of soft suet: and, when the more limpid kind is kept, it partly crystallizes into little irregular concretions. It evidently contains sugar, mucilage, wax, and an acid: and occasionally some essential oil, as in the perfumed honey of the Crimea. Honey is soluble in water, and partially in alcohol; and, like sugar, passes into the vinous and acetous fermentation. When heated over a slow fire it throws up a scum; and if the heat be continued so as to produce evaporation, the vapour is inflammable, and the honey becomes brown, and acquires an unpleasant flavour, which is strong in proportion to the degree of temperature employed. Lowitz found that the addition of charcoal to a solution of honey deprives it of odour, taste, and colour; but the colour again returns when the solution is evaporated.

Cavezzali separated the sugar by first melting the honey, then adding carbonate of lime (egg shells) in powder as long as any effervesence appeared; and, after separating a scum which forms by rest, filtering it and setting it aside to crystallize- The crystals he purified by washing them with alcohol.1 Proust separated it from a ready-granulated honey by the action of alcohol.2 The sugar of honey is of two kinds: one resembling the sugar of grapes, the other the sugar of the sugar-cane. Nitric acid converts honey into oxalic acid.

1 In some parts of Asia and America a poisonous honey is met with, which probably owes its deleterious properties to the flowers on which the bees feed. It is supposed that the honey extracted from the Azalea pontica, and some species of the genera kalmia, andromeda, and rhododendron are poisonous: and that the honey carried from the blossom of the Azalea pontica was that which poisoned the Greek soldbrs in the celebrated retreat of the ten thousand through Pontus. In the island of Bourbon, honey of a green colour, and very fragrant, is procured, and bears a high price in India, to which it is chiefly exported. But bees do not sip the honey secreted in all flowers; thus they refuse that of the crown imperial, Fritillaria imperialis, and of the oleander, Neman oleander, which kills thousand* of flies.

Medical properties and uses. -Honey is laxative, and externally detergent and stimulant. Simple honey is seldom ordered as an internal medicine3: indeed, when freely eaten as food, it passes off quickly by stool, and induces colic in some habits; on which account simple syrup should perhaps be preferred in all cases for forming medicinal preparations for internal use. As a local stimulant, it is employed in glysters; and forms an excellent adjunct to gargles in cynanche and in aphthous ulceration of the mouth and fauces. It is also a viseful detergent to foul ulcers.

Officinal preparations.-Mel despumatum, D. Mel Boracis, L.D. Mel Rosae, L. D. Oxymel, L. Di Oxymel Colchici, D. Oxymel Scillae, L. D. Oxymel Cupri subacetatis, D.