GOAT'S THORN. ACACIA. 201 



Gum Trag'acanth is the produce of another 

 plant in this class and order, great-Goat's 

 Thorn, Astragalus tragacan'tha, a thorny shrub, 

 which grows in the islands of the Levant. The 

 gum which exudes from its stem and branches 

 resembles gum-arabic in many of its properties : 

 it is used in medicine, calico-printing, and in 

 making ink. 



The Acacia-tree, Robin'ia Pseu'do-aca'cia, which 

 is so much admired in our shrubberies, has such 

 very brittle wood that a slight blast of wind is 

 sufficient to break off its branches ; so that it is not 

 fit for exposed situations : but it makes amends 

 for this defect by sending up from the roots 

 innumerable suckers, which grow very rapidly. 

 I have read of a farmer, at Long Island, in North 

 America, who, during the year after his marriage, 

 planted a field of fourteen acres with suckers of 

 this tree, as a provision for his children. When 

 his eldest son married, at twenty-two years of age, 

 the farmer cut down about three hundred pounds' 

 worth of timber out of his acacia wood ; and gave 

 the money to his son to buy a farm with. Three 

 years after he did the same for one of his daugh- 

 ters : and in this way he provided for his whole 

 family in succession ; the wood, in the mean 

 time, repairing by its suckers all the losses that it 

 sustained. 



