APETALEZ. 275. 
ORDER XL. 
EUPHORBIACE#. 
_ Cuaracters.—Herbs, shrubs, or trees, with leaves op- 
posite or alternate, usually simple, and with stipules, and a 
milky acrid juice in many, especially the herbaceous kind ; 
_ flowers moneecious or diccious, with bracteas, solitary, in 
clusters, or within a common involucre ; calyx inferior, with 
glands or scales, of several (often 5 or 10) divisions, of which 
the more interior are sometimes petaloid; stamens free or 
united ; female flowers with a calyx resembling that of the 
male flowers ; ovary superior, sessile, or with a stalk, gener- 
ally 3-celled, and with 8 sides (rarely 2, or more than 8 cells),) 
each cell with 1 or 2 suspended ovules ; styles generally 3; 
pericarp sometimes fleshy exteriorly, 3-celled (2 or more 
than 3 cells occasionally), the cells dehiscent, 1- or 2-seeded, 
2-valved, and separating from each other with elastic force ; 
seed with an arillus; embryo in the interior of a fleshy al- 
bumen. 
_ Exampes.—Sun-spurge or Little-good (Euphorbia heli- 
9scopa), Castor-oil plant (Ricinis communis), Box-wood 
(Buzus sempervirens). 
_ Economica, Prorerties.— Jatropha manihot (Janipha 
manihot) or Mandiocca, furnishes Cassava and Tapioca, two 
varieties of starch, well known for their nutritious proper- 
ties. The root contains a very large quantity of starch, . 
mixed, however, with an extremely acrid poisonous milky 
juice : the poisonous principle is very volatile and is remov- ¢ 
ed by washing and by heat. The root is reduced to a pulp 
or paste, by being bruised or grated ; the paste is pressedin 
bags, to squeeze out the juice which contains the poisonous _ 
Principle, and repeatedly washed with water, when cassava 
in The water with which the cassava has been wash- 
