23Q FAMILY HERBAL. 



The. root is used ; an infusion of it opens ob- 

 structions ; it is good against the jaundice. A de- 

 coction of the whole plant, fresh gathered, works 

 powerfully by urine, and is good against the gravel. 

 It also gently promotes the menses. 



Sugar Came A r undo saccharifera. 



A kind of reed, native of the East and West 

 Indies, of the Canary islands, and of some other 

 places ; and cultivated in all our plantations. It 

 is eight or ten feet high. The stalk is round, 

 hollow, hard, jointed, and upright ; it is very like 

 thiit of a common reed, only so much thicker. 

 The leaves are like those of the reed, but vastly 

 larger ; and the flowers arc in the same manner, dry, 

 brown, and chaffy, but the cluster of them is a 

 yard long ; the roots are long, creeping, and jointed 

 in the manner of the stalk. In very hot countries 

 the sugar will sweat out at the cracks of the stalks, 

 and stand in form of a bright powder ; this is native 

 sugar, and is what the antients meant when they 

 talked of honey growing upon reeds. We press out 

 the juice, and boil it fo the consistence of brown 

 sugar, which is afterwards refined, and becomes the 

 white powder or loaf-sugar. 



It were idle to talk of the virtues of sugar, its 

 uses are sufficiently known, and are very great. 



Sumach Rhus. 



A shrub, native of warmer countries, but 

 common in our gardens. It is of a singular ap- 

 pearance. It doses not grow more than ten or 

 twelve feet high ; the wood is brittle, and the bark 

 is brown. The leaves are long and very beautiful, 

 each consists of a great many pairs of smaller 



