GENTIANS. 461 
York in the New. They are chiefly remarkable for their hard 
black wood, sometimes variegated, and known as Ebony and 
Ironwood ; also for the extreme acerbity of their unripe food. 
The AgurroriAce®, which include the Common Holly, are 
found. sparingly in the West Indies and South America, where 
Tlex Paraguayensis yields the Paraguay tea, in the leaves of which 
r. Stenhouse detected theine. The evergreen shrub, Prinos 
glabra, is employed as a substitute for tea in many parts of N orth 
America. In Europe the Common Holly (Ilex aquifolium), with 
its numerous varieties of gold and silver-blotched, broad, narrow, 
and thick serrated leaves, is a beautiful object in ornamental 
clumps of shrubberies, especially when clothed with its profusion 
of red or yellow berries. 
The Apocynace®, or Dogbanes, are trees or shrubs, chiefly 
tropical, Vinca and Apocynum alone belonging to temperate 
climates. For the most part, they are handsome plants, with 
large, showy, symmetrical flowers. They all yield a milky juice 
by incision in the stem, which is generally poisonous. The 
Tanghin poison tree of Madagascar, which 
was at one time used as an ordeal of guilt 
or innocence, is remarkable for its poi- 
sonous properties. In the Periwinkle 
(Vinca minor), the calyx (Fig. 423) is 
five-parted, while the root, like that of the 
Gentians, is bitter, acrid, and astringent. 
Others are not only harmless, but nourish- 
ing; the Hya-Hya, or Milk-tree of Deme-  ¥s- #. Th asennad heer 
rara, and cream-fruit of Sierra Leone, are of this description. 
Caoutchoue is yielded in abundance by Vahea gummifera, Ureeola 
elastica, and Willughbeia edulis. Many of them yield valuable 
medicines, but from the great prevalence of the poisonous pro- 
perties in the order they require to be administered with caution. 
Even the Oleander (Neriwm) is a formidable poison, as well as a 
destroyer of cutaneous vermin. It is related that while the 
French troops occupied Madrid, a marauding soldier cut some 
branches of Neriwm oleander to employ as spits on which to roast 
his plunder, and of the twelve comrades who partook of the feast 
seven died, and the other five were dangerously ill. 
