a well-known vegetable product, which was equally known to the ancients, who used it medicinally. This plant, as employed by the ancient physicians, is believed to have been the Glycyrrhiza of Dioscorides and glycyrrhizion of Pliny. The root is obtained from a perennial herbaceous plant, the Glycyrrhiza glabra. Met with in some parts of Austria, it inhabits chiefly the deep light soils of Southern Europe, especially Spain, Italy, and France. It is much cultivated in England for medicinal purposes, particularly at Pontefract in Yorkshire, and Micham in Surrey. The root is long, creeping, and succulent, and about the thickness of the thumb, from which shoot forth several simple stems, from two to four feet high. The stems are covered with large, unequally pinnate, yellowish-green leaves of a viscous nature, and bear axillary, racemose, panicleaceous flowers of a whitish colour with purple tips, and succeeded by smooth four-seeded pods.

Liquorice-root consists of lignin, starch, wax, resinous oil, colouring matter, albumen, malic acid, earthy phosphates and sulphates, an azotized crystalline principle and glycione, or glycyrrhine. Liquorice is prepared in Spain, Italy, and Sicily, from the root of G. glabra only by inspissating the decoction in copper kettles till the mass is sufficiently thick to be firm when cooled. Made up into sticks of 6 inches long and dried on the leaves of the sweet bay, it is thus imported into Britain. The finest liquorice comes from Italy. It is of a brownish-black colour, smooth, shining and flexible when warm, brittle when cold, and of a very sweet taste. Water dissolves from three-fifths to eleven-twelfths of it; alcohol only about an eighth. The imported liquorice does very well for making lozenges, but when used for sweetening decoctions or as an excipient for pills, it requires to be purified. The extract of the root, when brought into this country, is commonly called Spanish liquorice, or liquorice juice. It is sometimes imported run into boxes of about 2 cwt. each, in which form it is said to be purer than when in sticks. The Russian liquorice root met with occasionally on the continent, but unknown in this country, is inferior to the common, and is said to be cultivated in preference to the ordinary liquorice plant from its greater power of enduring cold. The most dangerous adulteration to be met with in liquorice is copper, obtained from the pans in which it is prepared.