CHAP. XXXIIT. CELASTRA CEH. EUO’NYMUS. 497 
Britain, it was formerly employed in the manufacture of musical instruments ; 
and it is still occasionally used for keys to pianofortes, and by turners and 
coopers. In Scotland, it is employed, along with the wood of the alpine la- 
burnum (Cytisus alpinus L.), to form noggins, called bickers (? from the 
German word becher,acup). These bickers are formed of small staves, alter- 
nately of the spindle tree and the laburnum ; the wood of the former being white 
or yellowish, and that of the latter being very dark brown or black. When the 
wood of the spindle tree cannot be got, that of the holly is used. These 
bickers are employed both as drinking-vessels and as porridge dishes: in 
form they resemble milkpails; and when of a small size, are called luggies, 
from their having but one handle, which is called a lug, or ear. In Germany, 
shoots of 3 ft. or 4 ft. in length are bored and employed for the shanks of 
tobacco-pipes, the bowls being made of earthenware; and spindles are made 
of the wood in parts of the Continent where that mode of spinning is still 
practised: hence, the names of fusain and spindelbaum. The wood, split 
up into thin pieces, is formed into whisks for driving away flies. A charcoal 
is made of the shoots, which is much valued by artists, from the lines traced 
with it being easily effaced. This charcoal is made by putting a number of 
the shoots of two years’ growth into an iron tube, and, after closing it so as to 
exclude the air, putting the tube in a fire till it becomes red. It is then taken 
out, and allowed to cool before the charcoal is removed. In using this char- 
coal, or charcoal crayons, as they are called, it is necessary, in sharpening them, 
to cut them to a point on one side, on account of the centre being only pith. 
The fruits of the tree have been employed by dyers, who derive three colours 
from them, green, yellow, and red. The first is obtained by boiling the seeds 
with alum; the second, by boiling the seeds alone; and the third, by using the 
capsules. A decoction of the capsules in alkali is said to colour hair red ; 
and the leaves, dried and powdered, and put among the hair of the heads of 
children, is said to drive away vermin: hence one of the names, The fruit is 
said to be purgative and emetic in an eminent degree; so much so as not to be 
eaten by birds. After all, the principal use of the spindle tree at present, in 
Britain, is, to form skewers for butchers and cooks, and for watchmakers; 
the large trees in Forfarshire, that were formerly used by coopers in making 
bickers, being, for the most part, no longer to be met with. In ornamental 
plantations, this species, and all the others, are chiefly interesting in autumn, 
when, as Dumont elegantly observes, “they spread, by their numerous pendent 
capsules of a bright red colour or pure white, and their white and orange- 
coloured seeds, some rays of brilliance over the departing season, and recall 
the remembrance of the fine days of summer.” (ot. Cult., vol. vi. p. 243.) 
Casualties. The leaves are liable to be attacked by the caterpillar of the 
Yponomeita Euonymélla Lair.; so much so, that the plant, both in hedges and 
gardens, may frequently be seen wholly without leaves, and bearing numerous 
webs of a cobwebby appearance and consistence, which are formed by the 
young caterpillars, in the course of their feeding, in passing from point to 
point. 
Statistics. The largest specimens of Z. europz‘us in Great Britain appear to be in Scotland ; more 
especially in Forfarshire, where the tree abounds, and attains a very considerable size, being fre- 
quently found from 25 ft. to 35 ft.in height, with trunks from 1 ft. to 18 inches in diameter. The 
wood, in that part of the country, is, or was formerly, much in demand by coopers and turners. In the 
neighbourhood of London, we know of but few large trees. One in Kensington Gardens, a little 
distance west of the Bayswater Gate, is 15 ft. high; in the Brompton Nursery, the white-capsuled 
variety has attained the height of 12 ft., with two stems, and a head covering a space of 25 ft. in dia- 
meter ; at Mount Grove, Hampstead, 10 years planted,'the species is 6 ft. high; in Essex, at Hylands, 
10 years planted, it is 14 tt. high ; in Oxfordshire, in the Oxford Botanic Garden, 40 years planted, it is 
17 ft. high; in Pembrokeshire, at Golden Grove, 7 years planted, and 10 ft. high; in Rutlandshire, 
at Belvoir Castle, 18 years planted, and 15 ft. high ; in Staffordshire, at Trentham, 14 ft. high; in 
Yorkshire, at Grimston, 12 years planted, and 12 ft. high. In Scotland, in the Glasgow Botanic Gar. 
den, 12 years planted, and 13 ft. high; in Bamffshire, at Gordon Castle, many trees are 20 ft. high. 
In Ireland, at Cypress Grove, near Dublin, 15 ft. high; at Terenure, 15 ft. high; at Coole, 17 tt. 
high, the diameter of the trunk, at 1ft. from the ground, 1 ft. 2 in., and of the space covered by the 
branches 25 ft. In France, near Paris, at Scéaux, 20 ft. high. In Austria, at Kopenzel, near 
Vienna, 16 ft. high; in Held’s Nursery, at Vienna, the white-capsuled variety, 12ft. high; at 
Hadersdorf, 15 ft. high; at Briick onthe Leytha, 14 ft. high.*~ In Prussia, at Sans Souci, 15 ft. high. 
_In Bavaria, in the Botanic Garden at Munich, 12 ft. high. In Sweden, in the Botanic Garden at 
Lund, 16 ft, high. WI 
MM 2 
