46 DESCRIPTIVE BOTANY. 



in spasmodic affections. It diminishes secretions, and for this purpose is 

 largely used. So important has it become that it has passed into a proverb 

 that a physician without opium is like a soldier without weapons. The 

 most important preparations of opium are laudanum, which is an alcoholic 

 tincture, paregoric, which is a compound of opium, benzoic acid, honey, 

 oil of anise, and dilute alcohol. Soothing syrups, given to keep children 

 quiet, contain much opium, and sometimes cause sickness, and occasionally 

 insanity. 



The seed yields an oil only inferior to the best olive oil, and is used both as a 

 substitute and an adulterant. Opium is used as a luxury for an intoxicant, either 

 taken in small doses internally or smoked, when it* is mixed with the hashish, 

 or gum of the hemp, and with grateful spices. If indulged in to excess, it 

 enfeebles the mind and enervates the body, and is said to shorten the life of 

 the offspring of the debauchee. It enables people to bear fatigue without 

 food, and travellers in Turkey, Syria, and India carry it Mdth them for that 

 purpose. Even horses are sustained, in the East, under its influence. It is 

 eaten, not smoked, in Persia and India; smoking it is a recent Chinese inven- 

 tion. In Amoy, China, fifteen out of every twenty adults smoke it. 



Statistics. — Great quantities of opium are carried into China and vicinity. 

 That from India alone is over 14,000,000 pounds annually. Large quantities 

 go overland from Persia and Turkey^ but this is only about one fifth of the 

 amount consumed there, as they produce four fifths of what they use, making 

 an annual consumption of 71,001,840 pounds, at a cost of $280,000,000. 



Order IV. CRUCIFERiE. 



Sepals 4. Petals 4, hypogynous, arranged opposite to each other in 

 pairs, forming a cross. Stamens 6, 4 long and 2 shorter. Flowers 

 perfect, usually in a terminal raceme, white or yellow- . Ovary sessile, 

 usually 2-celled. Stigmas 2. Fruit a pod, one to many seeded, seeds 

 commonly yielding oil. Mostly herbs, sometimes woody. Juice watery, 

 frequently acid, anti-scorbutic, and never poisonous. Stem cylindrical, 

 or angular. Leaves simple, alternate, occasionally opposite, entire, 

 lobed, or dissected ; upper ones sometimes eared, lower ones often 

 runcinate, for the most part without stipules. Genera, 172. 



CAPSELLA, Medic. Seed-vessel, triangular-obcordate ; valves, boat- 

 shaped without wings. Seeds many, with incumbent cotyledons. 

 Pod flattened contrary to partition. Flowers white. A common 

 weed. 



C. Bursa-pastoris. (Shepherd's Purse.) Root-leaves rosulate, cut-lobed; 

 stem-leaves linear lanceolate, clasping, sagittate ; raceme long. Radical leaves 

 clustering, subpinnatifid. Waste ground about dwellings. Common weed. 

 April to September. 



Geography. — Naturalized from Europe, where it is a troublesome weed in 

 gardens and near dwellings. 



Etymology. — Capsella is the diminutive of Latin capsa, a box. 



BRASSICA, L. (Turnip, Mustard.) Pod long, terete, somewhat 

 4-sided, terminating in a stout 1-seeded beak j valves 1-3-veined ; 



