CXLIII.— THE SWEET MILK-VETCH. 
Astragalus glycyphyllos Linne. 
O NE of the most ancient games in the world is that of huckle-bones, known in 
Latin as tali and in Greek as aa-TpdyoKoi., astragaloi, in which the tarsal bones of 
sheep and goats are used as dice. It is difficult, however, to trace any connection 
between the name of these bones and that of the large genus of Leguminosce to which 
it has been attached since the time of Theophrastus. 
The genus Astragalus is one of the largest in the Vegetable Kingdom, containing 
as it does some twelve hundred species. It has spread over the greater part of the 
globe, with the exception of Australia and South Africa ; but belongs mainly to 
extra-tropical regions, especially in Asia. There are 120 species in Europe, of which 
only three occur in Britain. Most of the species are natives of steppes, prairies, 
or dry alpine plateaux, and are more or less markedly xerophytic in their adaptations. 
Though sometimes shrubby, often woody, and always perennial, they are mostly 
low-growing plants with relatively large flowers. Many species are spinous, the 
spines being formed by the stiffening of the main rhachis or midrib of the leaf after 
the fall of the terminal leaflet. The dry hills of Persia, Syria, and Anatolia are often 
covered with a variety of these spinous species ; others are among the beauties of the 
Alps, and others again are found in the punas or upland plateaux of the Andes. 
Though the genus extends into Arctic regions and to high altitudes, it seems most 
probable that its original home was the warm, dry Warm Temperate region of the 
Old World, which we may term, in a wide sense, Mediterranean, lying, that is, 
between the Indus and the Tibetan plateaux on the one hand and Spain and 
Morocco on the other. 
Several of the shrubby spinous species of south-west Asia and Greece, especially 
Astragalus gummifer Labillardiere, yield the gum long known as Gum Tragacanth. 
Theophrastus uses this name also, speaking of A. creticus Lamarck, and it is explained 
as from rpayos, tragos, a goat, and aKavda, akantha, a thorn, with reference to the 
fancied resemblance of the bush with its crowded mass of more or less parallel 
thorns to a goat’s beard. As the name Tragacanth has been corrupted into the 
French Gomme draganl and in English into Gum Dragon, it may be suggested that 
Astragalus itself was originally based upon Tragacantha. The gum is the result of the 
breaking down of the cell-walls of the pith and rays of the stem into mucilage. In 
the heavy mists which are said to hang frequently over the hills where these species 
of Astragalus grow, their wood is stated to take in much moisture, which causes the 
mucilage to swell and force itself in thin flakes through narrow splits in the bark. 
A better quality is now obtained from artificial incisions in the lower part of the stem. 
It is considerably used in medicine and dentistry, and in the stiffening of crape, 
being free from the brittleness and gloss of Gum Arabic, Smyrna being the chief 
