106 HORSE-CHESNUT. 
grain, rice may be used with considerable advantage as 
an ingredient in bread. Indeed, on account of its ex- 
cellence and its cheapness, it claims attention as a 
general article of sustenance for the poorer classes of 
society ; as it is well known that a quarter of a pound 
of rice, slowly boiled, will yield more than a pound 
of solid and nutritive food. For the fattening of poul- 
try, boiled rice has been adopted with success, and it 
would be more generally adopted than it is, were it not 
for an unfounded and very extraordinary notion that it 
tends to make them blind. 
The inhabitants of the East obtain from rice a vinous 
liquor, which is more intoxicating than the strongest 
wine ; and an ardent spirit, called arrack, is also partly 
made from it. The latter is chiefly manufactured at 
Batavia, and at Goa on the coast of Malabar ; and is 
said to be distilled from a mixture of the wort or infu- 
sion of rice, and of toddy, or the juice of the cocoa- 
nut tree (233), to which other ingredients, and parti- 
cularly spices, are added. 
There is only one species of rice ; but the varieties 
of it, according to the soil, climate, and culture, are 
very numerous. 
CLASS VII. HEPTANDRIA. 
MONOGYNIA. 
117. The HORSE-CHESNUT (JZsculus hippocasta- 
num, Fig. 66) is a very common tree In parks and pleasure 
gfbunds, bearing leaves e~ach composed of seven targe lobes ; and 
having large and elegant clusters of light -coloured flowers. 
Each flower consists of Jive petals of white colour, irregularly 
spotted with red and yellow ; and roundish, but undulated or waxed, 
tit the edges. The fruit, which is of bitter and unpleasant taste , 
is enclosed in a roundish capsule or seed vessel f beset with spines, 
and divided into three cells. 
