ELTSHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 129 



A short preliminary account of these members of the Genus 

 Ilex, taken from the pages of Curtis,* will add to the value of 

 the paper and make it more intelligible. 



Holly. {Ilex Opaca, Ait.). — Thirty to forty feet high and 

 twelve to fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, with 

 a fine, compact grain, and takes a brilliant polish. The berries 

 are purgative and fifteen or twenty of them will produce vomit- 

 ing. 



Dahoon Holly. (I. Dahoon, Walt.). — A shrub or small 

 tree, from six to twenty-five feet high, growing on the borders of 

 the pine-barren ponds and swamps of our low country. The 

 leaves are one or two inches long, one-fourth to one-half inch 

 wide, entire, or with a few sharp teeth near the upper end, ever- 

 green. The berries are red. 



Yopon. (I. Cassine, Linn.). — An elegant shrub, ten to fifteen 

 feet high, but sometimes rising into a small tree of twenty or 

 twenty-five feet. Its native place is near salt water, and it is 

 never found far in the interior. The leaves are small, one-half 

 to one inch long, very smooth, and evenly scolloped on the edges 

 with small, rounded teeth. In some sections of the Lower Dis- 

 trict, especially in the region of the Dismal Swamp, these are 

 annually dried and used for tea, which is, however, oppressively 

 sudorific — at least to one not accustomed to it. The berries are 

 a bright red. 



According to Curtis there are in this State five additional spe- 

 cies of this Genus — I. decidua, Walt.; I. ambigua, Chapm.; /. 

 verticillata, Gray. ; I. glabra, Gray. ; I. coriaeea, Chapm. — but the 

 examination was not extended to them. 



In searching for the alkaloids the directions of Dragendorff't 

 were first followed. The leaves (or crushed berries) were di- 

 gested at 40° — 60° with dilute sulphuric acid. This extract was 

 evaporated to a syrupy consistence, the residue mixed with three 

 or four times its bulk of alcohol, filtered after twenty-four hour-' 



*The Woody Plants of North Carolina, 58 et seq. 

 fBlyth, Poisons; Effects and Detection, 224. 



