10 HONEYSUCKLE. 



first year. Against a wall, the climbing kinds are very liable to 

 attacks from aphides, and the caterpillar of Phalcena tortrix : the 

 hawk-moths or sphinges, extract the honey from the very bottom 

 of the flowers with their long- tongues. 



Qualities and General Uses. — This shrub has not only 

 beauty and fragrance to recommend it, but has some claims to 

 utility. According to Reuss, the root furnishes a sky-blue colour, 

 and the branches may also be employed in dyeing. Kops* tells us 

 that of the stem and branches are made teeth for rakes, weavers' 

 stays, and tubes for tobacco-pipes. The foliage is eaten occasion- 

 ally by oxen, goats, and sheep, but refused by horses. The leaves, 

 when bruised, have a disagreeable odour and an insipid styptic 

 taste. The juice imparts a red tinge to litmus paper. The bark 

 has but little odour, and a slightly acrid and bitter taste, which it 

 imparts by infusion to water. The aqueous infusion is of a yellow- 

 ish-red colour, has a slightly narcotic odour and a bitterish taste, 

 and assumes a dark hue with sulphate of iron. The berries have a 

 bitter and nauseous taste ; bruised and distilled in a sand-bath, 

 they are said to yield an oily liquor. 



Medicinal Properties and Uses. — The Honeysuckle is rarely, 

 if ever, employed by the profession in this country ; yet the bark,, 

 stem, leaves, and flowers, are possessed of properties which have 

 claimed for the plant an admission into some of the continental 

 pharmacopoeias! . The bark is useful in gout; and, combined 

 with other sudorific plants and woods, was highly esteemed by 

 Ettmuller+ for the cure of lues venerea. Its properties bear some 

 affinity to those of sarsaparilla, which is a similar kind of plant. 

 Schroeder, Boeder, and Chomel, prescribe it both internally and 

 externally. In decoction it is a tolerable diuretic; and according 

 to Gardane, very serviceable in this form as a gargle in angina.§ 

 The leaves, bruised, were applied by Chomel || to diseases of the 

 skin ; and the juice has been used with the same view, as also to 

 cleanse foul ulcers. The flowers, in infusion or decoction, were 

 considered by Hoffman cephalic, and by other practitioners have 



* Flora Batava. 



t Codex Medicamcntarius rive Pharmacopoeia Gallica ; Pharmacopoeia 

 Genevensis, and Ph. Wirtcmbergica. 

 I Ettmul. Opcr. Med., p. 532. 

 § Gard. Gazette dc Sante\ 1774, p. 236. 

 I! Chom.; Usuelles, t. ii. p. 387. 



