Part II.

Materia Medica.

187

This tree, which is supposed to have come originally fromPersia, bears the cold of our winters, and ripens its fruit inEngland. The fruit has the same properties with other sub-acid fruits. Its juice contains tartaric acid.

MOSCHUS MOSCHIFERUS.

Mammalia.The musk deer.

Off. —The substance called Musk, contained in a follicle si-tuated near the navel.Materia in folliculo prope umbilicum collecta, Moschusdictus. Ed.

Moschus. Lond. Diib.

The musk animal is an inhabitant of the most elevated re-gion of Asia, particularly of the Altayan Alps, and the moun-tains which divide Thibet from China. It is gentle and ti-mid, and its chace is difficult and dangerous. It is aboutthree feet in length, and in its general form resembles the deertribe. In the male, behind the navel, and before the prepuce,there is situated an oval bag, flat on one side, and convex on.the other, about three inches long, and two broad, projectingabout an inch, and having a small open orifice, beset withshort hairs. In the young animal it is empty, but in the adultit is filled with a secreted matter, known by the name of Musk.When the bag becomes too full, the animal expresses part ofits contents, by rubbing itself against stones or trees. Themusk expressed in this manner is said to be the purest, butnone of it probably reaches this country. The best musk isbrought from Tonquin, an inferior sort from Agria and Ben-gal, and a still worse from Russia.

Fine musk comes to us in round thin bladders, which aregenerally about the size of a pigeon's egg, covered with shortbrown hairs, lined with a thin brown membrane, well filled,and without any appearance of having been opened. Themusk itself is dry, with a kind of unctuosity, of a dark red-dish brown or rusty blackish colour, in small round grains,with very few hard black clots, and perfectly free from sandy,or other visible foreign matter. If chewed, and rubbed witha knife on paper, it looks smooth, bright, yellowish, and is freefrom grittiness. Laid on a red-hot iron, it catches flame, andburns almost entirely away, leaving only an exceedingly smallquantity of light greyish ashes. The largest and fullest bagscarcely contains more than two drachms of musk.

Its taste is somewhat bitterish, and its smell extremelypowerful and peculiar. Neumann got from thirty grains of