colour and perfectly transparent. It is one of the heaviest of the volatile oils, and sinks rapidly in water if a sufficient quantity be added to overcome the repulsion of two heterogeneous fluids. Its taste is aromatic, sweet and highly pungent.

The oil appears to contain the chief medicinal virtue of the plant, since I know of no case in which the leaves, deprived of their aroma, have been employed for any purpose. They are nevertheless considerably astringent, and exhibit the usual evidences of this property when combined with preparations of iron.

The berries, or berry-like calyces, have a pulpy but rather dry consistence, and a strong flavour of the plant. They are esteemed by some persons, but are hardly palatable enough to be considered esculent. In the colder seasons they afford food to the partridges and some other wild animals.

The leaves, the essence and the oil of this plant are kept for use in the apothecaries' shops. An infusion of the leaves has been used to communicate an agreeable flavour to tea, also as a substitute for that article by people in the country. Some physicians have prescribed it medicinally as an emmenagogue, with success in cases attended with debility. The oil, though somewhat less pungent than those of peppermint and origanum, is

employed for the same purposes. It shares with them the property of diminishing the sensibility of the nerve exposed by a carious tooth, when repeatedly applied. The essence, consisting of the volatile oil dissolved in alcohol or proof spirit, is antispasmodic and diaphoretic, and may be applied in all cases where warm or cordial stimulants are indicated. A tincture, formed by digesting the leaves in spirit, possesses the astringency as well as warmth of the plant, and has been usefully employed in diarrhæa.

A respectable physician of Boston informs me, that he has in various instances found the infusion of this plant very effectual in promoting the mammary secretion, when deficient; and even in restoring that important function after it had been for some time suspended. Whether the medicine has any specific influence of this sort, independent of the general state of the patient's health, I am not prepared to say.

BOTANICAL REFERENCES.

Gaultheria procumbens, LINN. Sp. pl.-MICHAUX, Flor. i. p. 249.-PURSH, i. 283.-NUTTALL, Gen. i. 263.-ANDREWS, Bot. Repository, t. 116.-WILLD. Arb. 123.-Vitis Idea Canadensis Pyrolæ folio, TOURNEFORT, Inst. 608.-Anonyma pedunculis arcuatis, COLDEN, Noveb. 98.

MEDICAL REFERENCES.

KALM, Amoenitates Academicæ, iii. 14.-BART. Coll. i. 19.

PLATE XXII.

Fig. 1. Gaultheria procumbens.

Fig. 2. The bractes or outer calyx.

Fig. 3. The true calyx.

Fig. 4. Stamen of the natural size.

Fig. 5. Anther magnified, the dark places shewing the mode of

PODOPHYLLUM PELTATUM.

May Apple.

PLATE XXIII.

THE Podophyllum peltatum or May apple,

otherwise called Mandrake in this country, inhabits low shady situations from New England to Georgia. On the Atlantic coast I have never met with it farther north than Boston, yet in the interior of the country it has a more extensive range. From its large creeping roots, it has a great tendency to multiply, and is always found in beds of greater or less extent. Its flowering time is from March to May.

This plant is one of the Ranunculacea of Jussieu and Rhoades of Linnæus; and is in the first order of the Class Polyandria.

Its generic character consists in a calyx of three leaves; from six to nine petals; and a one-celled berry crowned with the stigma. Only one spe