Spec. Plant. Willd. iii. 283.

Cl. 14. Ord. 2. Didynamia Angiospermia. Nat. ord. Scrophu-larineae.

G. 1155. Cal. five-parted. Corolla bell-shaped, five-cleft, bellying. Capsule ovate, two-celled.

1 Ray and Hudson suppose it to be. an outcast of gardens, and not an indigenous plant of England. It is mentioned by Chaucer under the name " cloue gilofre;"

-----------------"to put in ale,

Whether it be moist or stale." 2 Gerard says, that when they are made into a conserve, they are "exceeding cordiall, and wonderfully above measure comfort the heart."

Species 1. D. Purpurea. Purple Foxglove.1 Med. Bot. 2d edit. 218. t. 78. Smith, Flor. Brit. 665. Eng. Bot. 1297. Withering's Account of Foxglove.

Officinal. Digitalis folia, semina, Lond. Digitalis Purpureae folia, Edin. Dub. Foxglove leaves and seeds.

Syn. Grande Digitalis (F.), Purpurrother Fingerhut (G), Paarsch vinger-hoed (Dutch), Fingerbolle (Dan), Fingerborrsort (Swed.), Paluszniczek (Pol.), Digitale Porporino (I.), Dedalera purpurea (S.), Deda leira (Portug.).

Foxglove is an indigenous biennial plant, found growing generally on the sides of hills and roads, where the soil is dry, sandy, or gravelly; flowering from the middle of June to nearly the middle of August. The root is knotty and fibrous, sending up an erect stem about four feet in height; round, downy, and leafy. The lower leaves are in tufts, large, about eight inches in length and three in breadth, ovate, and pointed, with bordered fleshy peduncles: the upper or stem leaves are alternate, sparse, and lanceolate; and both kinds have bluntly serrated, nearly crenate edges, and wrinkled velvety surfaces; with the upper surface of a beautiful deep green colour, and the under paler and more downy. The flowers, which are numerous, are attached on foot-stalks to one side of the upper part of the stem, so as to allow them to hang down and form a very elegant terminal spike. At the base of each foot-stalk is a sessile, pointed florid leaf. The uppermost segment of the calyx is narrower than the other four: the corolla is monopetalous, of an oblong bell-shape, and about the size of the little finger of an ordinary glove, bellying on the lower side, with a short, tubular base; the upper lip is slightly cloven, and more reflected than the under, which is larger: the corolla is guarded by long hairs at the mouth : its general colour is a bright pinkish purple, with the tube white, and the bellying part sprinkled on the inside with dark purple spots on a white ground, which give to the outside a speckled appearance : the filaments are white, curved, bearing large oval yellow anthers: the germen is pointed, supporting a simple style with the apex cloven: the seed-vessel, which is a pyramidal capsule, with a double partition produced by the inflected margins of the valves2, contains many small, ferruginous, punctated seeds.

The leaves are the parts of the plant medicinally used. They should be gathered when the plant is in flower, and

1 It was named Digitalis by Fuchsius, (Plantarum omnium Nomenclaturae, 1541,) the first author who notices its medicinal properties, from the German name Fingerhut, a finger-stole. It had been previously described by Tragus under the name of Campanula sylvestris.

2 Gartner de Fructibus, etc. i. 247. t. 53. f. 6 those only which are fresh selected. "The leaf-stalks and midrib should be rejected, and the remaining part be dried either in the sunshine, or on a tin pan or pewter dish before the fire, or the plant be hung up, each leaf separate, in a warm kitchen." Practitioners ought annually to obtain a supply of the recent leaves, in the month of July, and dry them themselves; as in the herb shops they are often so ill dried as to appear black, in which state they are useless. The powder should be kept in closely-stopped opaque phials. Qualities,-Recent foxglove leaves are inodorous; but in the dried state they have a slight narcotic odour, and a bitter nauseous taste. Both water and alcohol extract their virtues. The watery infusion has a pale olive-green colour, with the unpleasant odour and taste of the plant It does not precipitate solutions of galls, tartarized antimony, nor sulphate of iron : the last only deepens its colour; but it precipitates infusion of yellow cinchona bark, produces a yellowish precipitate with bichloride of mercury, and a blackish violet very copious one with nitrate of silver.

The dry powder, which should have a beautiful green colour, moistened and triturated with lime or calcined magnesia, and a glass rod dipped in hydrochloric acid held over it, exhibits copious white fumes, proving the presence of ammonia. The presence of ammonia is also apparent in the tincture; which is rendered milky by water.1 Ten grains of the powder macerated in f ss. of sulphuric ether lost three grains of its weight, and yielded all its colour to the ether; and the ethereal tincture, on being evaporated on water, left a pellicle of dark green, unctuous, resinous matter, whilst some yellowish extractive was dissolved in the water, and precipitated afterwards by chlorine. From this imperfect analysis, foxglove appears to contain ammonia, extractive, and a pea-green resinous matter in which its narcotic power resides. More recent analysis was supposed to have discovered a peculiar alkaline principle, which was termed Digitaline, or Digitalia. It is procured by digesting the leaves in ether, filtering and evaporating, and dissolving the residuum in water, which is filtered, and then treated with hydra ted oxide of lead; which being evaporated, and the residuum digested in ether, yields up the digitaline, which is obtained in the separate state by evaporation. It is a brown pasty substance, very bitter, uncrystalli-zable and deliquescent; and restores the colour of paper reddened with an acid l: but it is ascertained to be merely chlorophylle, resin, and a fatty matter.

1 Destouches, a French chymist, who analyzed foxglove, obtained also much carbonate of ammonia by distilling the aqueous extract. He obtained, besides, sulphate of potash and of lime, phosphate of lime, carbonates of lime and of potash, and acetate of ammonia.