BOTANIC MATERIA MEDICA, 147 
leaflets are opposite and have very prominent 
veins; flowers perfect and of a greenish-yellow 
color, and in clusters; the fruit is a berry, 
fleshy, and at first red, but when ripe of a rich 
black, and containing several seeds umbilicated 
in character. The bark, as it occurs in com- 
merce, is in quills and quite thin, having a dark- 
brown color externally, and usually warty. The 
inner surface is smooth and of a rich brown 
color; when broken the fracture is short, hence 
the name Frangula (Latin frango, to break), 
easily broken. Buckthorn has little or no odor 
but a decidedly bitter and sourish taste; it con- 
tains resin, tannin, emodin, rhamnoxanthin and 
Srangulin, which is a yellow glucoside, giving a 
purple color to alkaline solutions. Its medical 
properties are tonic and purgative, as is also the 
R. Catharticus and the R. Purshiana, the 
dose of which is about 15 to 60 drops (1 to 4 
grams). The fluid extract of the above (R. 
Frangula) is officinal; the others are not so rec. 
ognized. 
Gossypium, Cotton, Gossypium Herbaceum, 
—Natural order Malvacez, “This plant or small 
tree is a native of India, naturalized and now 
cultivated in the United States, Africa, and © 
tropical America. Some authorities claim that 
the cotton plant was unknown to the Greeks 
until the invasion of Alexander the Great into 
Asia, for some of his scientific followers de- 
scribed two kinds of cotton tree, the Gossypium 
Indicum and the G. Arboreum, the latter bein g 
quite a large tree and said to yield very little 
cotton. The leaves of the plant or tree are 
alternate, and have palm-shaped lobes covered 
