THE BOX-TKEE FAMILY. 



357 



CXIIL— THE BOX-TREE FAMILY. EuphorlidcecB. 



The Euphorbiaceaj rank with the largest and most important 

 families of which botanists have knowledge, the number of species 

 probably amounting to not less than two thousand five hundred, and a 

 very considerable proportion being possessed of intensely active proper- 

 ties, that have given them celebrity, both in medicine and as poisons. 

 Few, however, come before the English student, the mass of the family 

 being tropical, and only one here and there sufficiently beautiful to 

 excite the interest or even the notice of the gardener. About three- 



Fig. 185. 

 Caper Spurge. 



eighths of the species hitherto discovered have been found in equinoctial 

 America ; the warmer parts of Africa contain the next largest propor- 

 tion, while in Europe there are scarcely more than one hundred and 

 twenty, and in temperate North America not half as many. No 

 family is more diversified in aspect. Trees, shrubs, stout and milky 

 herbs, diminutive green weeds, and deformed and leafless plants 

 resembling cactuses, represent it in difierent countries and difierent 

 zones, rendering a just idea of the family quite impossible, so long as 



