Botanical Origin—Anethum graveolens L., (Peucedanum[1245] graveolens Hiern) an erect, glaucous annual plant, with finely striated stems, usually to 1 to 1½ feet high, pinnate leaves with setaceous linear segments, and yellow flowers.

It is indigenous to the Mediterranean region, Southern Russia and the Caucasian provinces, but is found as a cornfield weed in many other countries, and is frequently cultivated in gardens. It succeeds in Norway as far north as Throndhjem.

Dill, under the Hindustani name of Suvā or Sōyah, is largely grown in various ports of India, where the plant though of but a few months’ duration, grows to a height of 2 to 3 feet. On account of a slight peculiarity in the fruit, the Indian plant was regarded by Roxburgh and De Candolle as a distinct species, and called Anethum Sowa, but it possesses no botanical characters to warrant its separation from A. graveolens.

History—Dill is commonly regarded to be the Ἄνηθον of Dioscorides, the Anethum of Palladius and other ancient writers, as well as of the New Testament.[1246] In Greece the name Ἄνηθον is at present applied[1247] to a plant of very similar appearance, Carum Ridolfia Benth. et Hook (Anethum segetum L.). By the later Greeks, the term Ἄνηθον was also used for dill.[1248]

Dill, as well as coriander, fennel, cumin, and ammi, was in frequent requisition in Britain in Anglo-Saxon times.[1249] The name is derived according to Prior[1250] from the old Norse word dilla, to lull, in allusion to the reputed carminative properties of the drug. However this may be, we find the word occurring in the 10th century in the Vocabulary of Alfric, archbishop of Canterbury.[1251] The words dill and till, undoubtedly meaning this drug, were also used in Germany and Switzerland as early as a.d. 1000.

Description—The fruit, which has the characters usual to Umbelliferæ, is of ovoid form, much compressed dorsally, surrounded with a broad flattened margin. The mericarps about ⅒ of an inch wide, are mostly separate; they are provided with 5 equidistant, filiform ridges, of which the two lateral lose themselves in the paler, broad, thin margin. The three others are sharply keeled; the darkest space between them is occupied by a vitta and two occur on the commissure. In the Indian drug, the mericarps are narrower and more convex, the ridges more distinct and pale, and the border less winged. In other respects it accords with that of Europe. The odour and taste of dill are agreeably aromatic.

Microscopic Characters—The pericarp is formed of a small number of flattened cells, which in the inner layer are of a brown colour; the ridges consist as usual of a strong fibro-vascular bundle. The vittæ in a transverse section present an elliptic outline ¹/₁₄₀ of an inch or less in diameter. The margin of the mericarp is built up of porous, parenchymatous tissue. The albumen as in the seeds of all umbellifers, consists of thick-walled, angular cells, loaded with fatty oil, and globular grains of albuminous matters which present a dark cross when examined by polarized light.

Chemical Composition—Dill fruit yields from 3 to 4 per cent. of an essential oil, the largest proportion of which was found by Gladstone (1864-1872) to be a hydrocarbon, C₁₀H₁₆, to which he gave the name Anethene. This substance has a lemon-like odour, sp. gr. ·846, and boils at 172° C. It deviates a ray of polarized light strongly to the right. Nietzki (1874) ascertained that there is, moreover, present another hydrocarbon, C₁₀H₁₆, in a very small proportion, which boils at 155-160°. A third constituent of oil of dill is in all probability identical with carvol (see page 307); we prepared from the former immediately the crystals (C₁₀H₁₄O)₂SH₂.

Uses—The distilled water of dill is stomachic and carminative, and frequently prescribed as a vehicle for more active medicines. The seeds are much used for culinary and medicinal purposes by the people of India, but are little employed in Continental Europe.

FRUCTUS CORIANDRI.

Botanical Origin—Coriandrum sativum L., a small glabrous, annual plant, apparently indigenous to the Mediterranean and Caucasian regions, not known growing wild, but now found as a cornfield weed throughout the temperate parts of the Old World. It is cultivated in many countries, and has thus found its way even to Paraguay. In England the cultivation of coriander has long been carried on, but only to a very limited extent.

History—Coriander appears to occur in the famous Egyptian papyrus Ebers; it is also mentioned, under the name of Kustumburu, in early Sanskrit authors, and is also met with in the Scriptures.[1252]

The plant owes its names Κόριον, Κορίαννον, and Κοριάνδρον, or also in the middle ages, Κλάνδρον, to the offensive odour it exhales when handled, and which reminds one of bugs,—in Greek Κόρις. This character caused it to be regarded in the middle ages as having poisonous properties.[1253] The ripe fruits which are entirely free from the fœtid smell of the growing plant, were used as a spice by the Jews and the Romans, and in medicine from a very early period. Cato, who wrote on agriculture in the 3rd century b.c., notices the cultivation of coriander. Pliny states that the best is that of Egypt. It is of frequent occurrence in the book “De opsoniis et condimentis” of Apicius Cœlius, about the 3rd century of our era. Coriander is also included in the list of Charlemagne, alluded to pages 92, 98, etc.

Coriander was well known in Britain prior to the Norman Conquest, and often employed in ancient Welsh and English medicine and cookery.

Cultivation—Coriander, called by the farmers Col, is cultivated in the eastern counties of England, especially in Essex. It is sometimes sown with caraway, and being an annual is gathered and harvested the first year, the caraway remaining in the ground. The seedling plants are hoed so as to leave those that are to remain in rows 10 to 12 inches apart. The plant is cut with sickles, and when dry the seed is thrashed out on a cloth in the centre of the field. On the best land, 15 cwt. per acre is reckoned an average crop.[1254]

Description—The fruit of coriander consists of a pair of hemispherical mericarps, firmly joined so as to form an almost regular globe, measuring on an average about ⅕ of an inch in diameter, crowned by the stylopodium and calycinal teeth, and sometimes by the slender diverging styles. The pericarp bears on each half, 4 perfectly straight sharpish ridges, regarded as secondary (juga secundaria); two other ridges, often of darker colour, belonging to the mericarps in common, the separation of which takes place in a rather sinuous line. The shallow depression between each pair of these straight ridges is occupied by a zigzag raised line (jugum primarium), of which there are therefore 5 in each mericarp. It will thus be seen that each mericarp has 5 (zigzag) so-called primary ridges, and 4 (keeled and more prominent) secondary, besides the lateral ridges which mark the suture or line of separation. There are no vittæ on the outer surface of the pericarp. Of the 5 teeth of the calyx, 2 often grow into long, pointed, persistent lobes; they proceed from the outer flowers of the umbel.

Though the two mericarps are closely united, they adhere only by the thin pericarp, enclosing when ripe a lenticular cavity. On each side of this cavity, the skin of the fruit separates from that of the seed, displaying the two brown vittæ of each mericarp. In transverse section, the albumen appears crescent-shaped, the concave side being towards the cavity. The carpophore stands in the middle of the latter as a column, connected with the pericarp only at top and bottom.

Corianders are smooth and rather hard, in colour buff or light brown. They have a very mild aromatic taste, and, when crushed, a peculiar fragrant smell. When unripe, their odour, like that of the fresh plant, is offensive. The nature of the chemical change that occasions this alteration in odour has not been made out.

The Indian corianders shipped from Bombay are of large size and of elongated form.

Microscopic Structure—The structural peculiarities of coriander fruit chiefly refer to the pericarp. Its middle layer is made up of thick walled ligneous prosenchyme, traversed by a few fibro-vascular bundles which in the zigzag ridges vary exceedingly in position.

Chemical Composition—The essential oil of coriander has a composition indicated by the formula C₁₀H₁₈O, and is therefore isomeric with borneol. If the elements of water are abstracted by phosphoric anhydride, it is converted, according to Kawalier (1852), into an oil of offensive odour, C₁₀H₁₆.

The fruits yield of volatile oil from 0·7 to 1·1 per cent.; as the vittæ are well protected by the woody pericarp, corianders should be bruised before being submitted to distillation. Trommsdorff (1835) found the fruits to afford 13 per cent. of fixed oil.

The fresh herb distilled in July when the fruits were far from ripe, yielded to one of us (F.) from 0·57 to 1·1 per mille of an essential oil possessing in a high degree the disagreeable odour already alluded to. This oil was found to deviate the ray of polarized light 1·1° to the right when examined in a column 50 mm. long. The oil distilled by us from ripe commercial fruit deviated 5·1° to the right.

Production and Commerce—Coriander is cultivated in various parts of Continental Europe, and, as already stated, to a small extent in England. It is also produced in Northern Africa and in India. In 1872-73, the export of coriander from the province of Sind[1255] was 948cwt.; from Bombay[1256] in the same year 619 cwt. From Calcutta[1257] there were shipped in 1870-71, 16,347 cwt.

Uses—Coriander fruits are reputed stimulant and carminative, yet are but little employed in medicine. They are however used in veterinary practice, and by the distillers of gin, also in some countries in cookery.

FRUCTUS CUMINI.

Botanical Origin.—Cuminum Cyminum L., a small annual plant, indigenous to the upper regions of the Nile, but carried at an early period by cultivation to Arabia, India and China, as well as to the countries bordering the Mediterranean. The fruits of the plant ripen as far north as Southern Norway; but in Europe, Sicily and Malta alone produce them in quantity.

History—Cumin was well known to the ancients; it is alluded to by the Hebrew prophet Isaiah,[1259] and is mentioned in the gospel of Matthew[1260] as one of the minor titheable productions of the Holy Land. Under the name Κύμινον, it is commended for its agreeable taste by Dioscorides, in whose day it was produced on the coasts of Asia Minor and Southern Italy. It is named as Cuminum by Horace and Persius; Scribonius Largus, in the first century of our era, mentions Cuminum æthiopicum, silvaticum and thebaicum.

During the middle ages, cumin was one of the spices in most common use. Thus in a.d. 716, an annual provision of 150 lb. of cumin for the monastery of Corbie in Normandy, was not thought too large a supply.[1261] Edrisi mentioned cumin as a product of Morocco (see article Fructus Carui, p. 305), Algeria and Tunisia. It was in frequent use in England, its average price between 1264 and 1400 being a little over 2d. per lb.[1262] Cumin is enumerated in the Liber albus[1263] of the city of London, compiled in 1419, among the merchandize on which the king levied the impost called scavage. It is mentioned[1264] in 1453 as one of the articles of which the Grocers’ Company had the weighing and oversight, and was classed in 1484 in the same way in the German warehouse in Venice.[1265]

Description—The fruit, the colour of which is brown, has the usual structure of the order; it is of an elongated ovoid form, tapering towards each end, and somewhat laterally compressed. The mericarps, which do not readily separate from the carpophore, are about ¼ of an inch in length and ⅒ of an inch in greatest breadth. Each has 5 primary ridges which are filiform, and scabrous or muriculate, and 4 secondary covered with rough hairs. Between the primary ridges is a single elongated vitta, and 2 vittæ occur on the commissural surface. A transverse section of the seed shows a reniform outline. There is a form of C. Cyminum in cultivation, the fruit of which is perfectly glabrous.

Cumin has a strong aromatic taste and smell, far less agreeable than that of caraway.

Microscopic Structure—The hairs are rather brittle, sometimes ½ mm. in length, formed of cells springing from the epidermis. The larger consists of groups of cells, vertically or laterally combined, and enclosed by a common envelope; the smaller of but a single cell ending in a rounded point. The whole pericarp is rich in tannic matter, striking with salts of iron a dark greenish colour.

The tissue of the seed is loaded with colourless drops of a fatty oil; the vittæ with a yellowish-brown essential oil. But the most striking contents of the parenchyme of the albumen consist of transparent, colourless, spherical grains, 7 to 5 mkm. in diameter, several of which are enclosed in each cell. Under a high magnifying power, they show a central cavity with a series of concentric layers around it, frequently traversed by radial clefts. Examined in polarized light, these grains display exactly the same cross as is seen in granules of starch, although their behaviour with chemical tests at once proves that they are by no means that substance; in fact iodine does not render them blue, but intensely brown. Grains of the same character, assuming sometimes a crystalloid form, occur in most umbelliferous fruits, and in many seeds of other orders. All these bodies are composed of albuminous and fatty matters; the more crystalloid form as met with in the seeds of Ricinus and in the fruit of parsley, is the body called by Hartig Aleuron.

Chemical Composition—Cumin fruits yielded to Bley (1829) 7 per cent. of fat oil, 13 per cent. of resin (?), 8 of mucilage and gum, 15 of albuminous matter, and a large amount of malates. Their peculiar, strong, aromatic smell and taste, depend on the essential oil of which they afford as much as 4 per cent. It contains about 56 per cent. of

Cuminol (or Cuminaldehyde),

a liquid of sp. gr. 0·972, boiling point 237° C. It has also been met with, in 1858, by Trapp in the oil of Cicuta virosa. By boiling cuminol with potash in alcoholic solution, cuminalcohol,

as well as the potassium salt of cuminic acid,

are formed.

The oil of cumin, secondly, contains a mixture of hydrocarbons. That which constitutes about one-half of the crude oil has been first obtained in 1841 by Gerhardt and Cahours, just from the oil under notice, and therefore called Cymene (or also Cymol). It is a liquid of 0·873 sp. gr. at 0° (32° F.), boiling at 175°; neither cymene nor cuminol have the same odour and taste as the crude oil. Many other plants have been noticed as containing cymene among the constituents of their essential oils. Thus for instance Cicuta virosa L., Carum Ajowan (page 304), Thymus vulgaris (see art. Folia Thymi), Eucalyptus globulus Labill.

may also be artificially obtained from a large number of essential oils having the composition C₁₀H₁₆, or C₁₀H₁₄O, or C₁₀H₁₆O, or C₁₀H₁₈O. It differs very remarkably from the oils of the formula C₁₀H₁₆, inasmuch as cymene yields the crystallizable cymen-sulphonic acids when it is warmed with concentrated sulphuric acid.

Lastly, there is present in the oil of cumin a small amount of a terpene, C₁₀H₁₆, boiling at 155·8° C., as stated in 1865 by C. M. Warren, and in 1873 by Beilstein and Kupffer.

The dextrogyrate power of cuminol is a little less strong than that of cymene; artificial cymene is optically inert.

Commerce—Cumin is shipped to England from Mogador, Malta and Sicily. In Malta there were in 1863, 140 acres under cultivation with this crop; in 1865, 730 acres, producing 2766 cwt.[1266]

The export of cumin from Morocco[1267] in 1872 was 1657 cwt.; that from Bombay in the year 1872-73 was 6766 cwt.;[1268] and 20,040 cwt. from Calcutta[1269] in the year 1870-71.

Uses—Cumin is sold by druggists as an ingredient of curry powders, but to a much larger extent for use in veterinary medicine.