584 ' PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1748. 



Its Description. — ^The Cyprus grows generally as a shrub of 10 or 15 feet in 

 height; and has very much the appearance of privet. Its trunk grows some- 

 times as thick as a man's thigh, is sometimes straight and sometimes crooked, 

 and produces a great number of branches irregularly. Its outward bark is ash- 

 coloured, and much furrowed, and detaches itself from the trunk of the tree in 

 long scales or pieces, by the heat and dryness of the climate, as in the Persian 

 gulf. Its inner bark is reddish without, and whitish within. That of the 

 branches is smooth and red, like that of the hazel-treej and green within. Its 

 young branches are straight, flexible, and moderately long. The wood of the 

 trunk is hard and whitish. 



Its leaves are disposed in different orders on the same twig. Sometimes they 

 are placed opposite in pairs along the small branches, and this most generally 

 cross-wise ; sometimes by 3 and 3 ; but then the leaves are less, and this dispo- 

 sition generally takes place in the larger branches ; sometimes they are alternate, 

 but rarely, and then the leaves are largest. The least branches are most charged 

 with leaves, the larger ones least. All these leaves are pointed at each end ; the 

 largest are 1 inches long, and about an inch broad in their middle ; the smallest 

 • bear half the dimensions of the largest . their edges are even : they are smooth, 

 shining, and of a beautiful green colour : their middle rib, which serves to each 

 leaf as a short pedicle, is terminated in their point, but sends out, in its passage 

 through the leaf, alternately 4 or 5 nervous filaments on each side. These leaves 

 are much like those of privet. ' 



The flowers grow in bunches at the extremities of the young branches, and 

 are endowed with a very agreeable and singular odour. They are of a straw- 

 colour ; but as they grow old and wither, they become of the colour of a citron. 

 The calyx is more pale than the corolla of the flowers. Its petals are turned up 

 as much, if not more, than those small petals are which adorn the centre of a 

 double rose. The stamina, which are white, transparent, and which grow from 

 the base of the embryo of the fruit, form as it were a double cross, by their 

 almost parallel situation and extension between the petals. The lobes of the 

 calyx, being of the same length and form of the petals, seem to give to the en- 

 tire flower an octagonal figure. The summits or antherae are small, and of the 

 same colour as the petals, each having a deep flirrow in its bottom ; the more 

 these decay, the more yellow they grow, in the same manner as the petals. The 

 furrow in the anthera, which at first is of a palish black, grows of a deeper hue 

 as the flower fades. The pistillum, after the flower is gone, grows larger in the 

 calyx, and becomes, when perfectly ripe, a dry, membranous, round fmit, of 

 about 3 lines in diameter. But before it arrives to this state, it resembles very 

 much a fleshy berry, green on one side, purplish, and sometimes black on the 



other, with very little juice. This false berry is the growing capsule, the side 



