44 
INODOROUS CANDLE TREE. 
described by Bartram, and it has also been found in 
Alabama by Dr. Juet, from whom I have been favoured 
with specimens. It may with propriety be called a tree, 
though never so large a one as the Myrica Faya , or 
Fayal Myrtle. The stem sometimes attains the thick- 
ness of a man’s arm, and, like the rest of the genus, it 
is gregarious and forms stout thickets on the margins of 
small streams and swamps. The berries are twice as 
large as those of the common Wax Myrtle. Though 
the leaves have no perceptible scent, they are not 
always entirely without the usual scaly resinous glands; 
they have no serratures, and are about 3 to 3£ inches 
long, by 1 to 1| wide. The bark is of a grey colour, 
inclining to brown. The male catkins are unusually 
large, as well as the berries, and the leaves, when old, 
are as stiff as in the laurel. The stamens beneath each 
scale of the ament are 8, with distinct filaments and 
monadelphous at base, the summit of the catkin is 
nearly without scales, and terminates in monadelphous 
branchlets of stamens, each bearing 3 or 4 anthers. The 
female catkin is loose, and the lower scales empty; the 
germ is pilose. The wood appears compact, fine grain- 
ed, and nearly white. The candles formed of the myrtle 
wax burn long, yield a grateful smell, and are destitute 
of the disagreeable scent produced on extinguishing 
tallow candles. In Carolina a kind of sealing wax has 
been made of it, and the root has been accounted a 
specific in toothache. In Prussia it has been cultivated 
for the wax. 
The Fayal Myrtle, (M. Faya,) is in Fayal the princi- 
pal article of fuel; it there attains the ordinary height 
of a peach tree, with a more erect stem; it produces a 
considerable quantity of compact reddish wood. It is 
also cultivated in rows between and around the orange 
