EUPHORBIA OF ECONOMIC PLANTS. 167 



especially the Blue Gum {E. globulus) and E. amygdalina, have 

 come into high repute as sanitary trees, and have exercised on 

 regions of the warm temperate zone a greater influence, scenic, 

 industrial, and hygienic, than any other single species of arboreous 

 vegetation ever reared anywhere, even Pines or Oaks and other 

 classes of leading trees not excepted. Thus the features of wide, 

 formerly treeless, landscapes have already afforded, in many 

 places, timber and fuel for rapidly-increasing settlements, and 

 rendered also many a miasmatic locality permanently habitable, 

 such as the Pontine Marshes near Eome and other parts of Italy; 

 also in Algeria and in some parts of India they begin to assume 

 the character of natural forests. 



Euphorbia, the name of an extensive genus, the type of the 

 Spurgewort family (Euphorbiacese). The species are very vari- 

 able in habit. They are represented in this country by about a 

 dozen annual and perennial herbs, the most common being EJielio- 

 sco^pia, an annual well known as Little Goody. In the Canaries, 

 West, South, and East Africa, and India, numbers of the species 

 are of succulent habit, varying much in form, some consisting 

 of simple globose or branching stems not more than a foot in 

 height, while others become hard and woody, stiff-branched 

 small trees, generally leafless, or nearly so. E. grandiclens, 

 native of the Cape of Good Hope, attains a height of 20 to 30 

 feet ; its branches are nearly horizontal, in the form of a chan- 

 delier. The flowers in many of the species are small and incon- 

 spicuous, while in others they are showy, as in E. splendens, a 

 spiny species, native of Madagascar. E. punicea, native of 

 the West Indies, and the splendid E. pulcherrima, native of 

 Mexico, better known as Poinsettia pulcherrima. Most of the 

 succulent species agree in habit and general appearance with 

 analogous forms of cacti, but are readily distinguished on being 

 punctured or cut by a copious flow of milky juice, which is 

 more or less acrid and poisonous in the different species, 

 especially on coming in contact with wounds or witli the eyes. 

 Fish are readily destroyed by placing pieces of E. piscatoria, 

 E. Tirucalli, or E. pendula, in waters where fish abound. As a 



