THEIR ATTRIBUTES AND NAMES. 
115 
Tolygonacece. —This order includes the buckwheat, the persicarias, 
the water-pepper, the docks, the rhubarb, and the sorrels, of which 
the latter is largely cultivated on the Continent as a vegetable, 
under the name “ oseille,” being cooked like spinach. 
Euphorbiacece. —The Spurges are distributed over the tropical and 
temperate regions of the globe, and, although differing considerably 
in many respects, yet nearly all agreeing in being furnished with a 
juice, often milky, which is highly acrid, narcotic, or corrosive. 
The British spurges are remarkable for the singular structure of 
their green flowers, and their acrid milky juice, a small quantity 
of which placed upon the tongue produces a burning heat in the 
mouth and throat for some hours. The leaves of the Irish spurge 
are used by the peasants, bruised, for stupefying fish, upon which 
they have a most powerful effect. The three British genera, 
Euphorbia (spurge), Buxus (box), and Mercurialis (mercury), are 
more or less poisonous. The dog-mercury has a powerfully poisonous 
effect on dogs, and the boxtree is poisonous to cattle ; in some parts 
of Persia, where it is very plentiful, large numbers of camels are 
killed annually by browsing on it. The juice of the euphorbias has 
been found useful in protecting iron and steel from rust, a fact 
which was discovered through the tools used in cutting down some 
euphorbias in Natal not rusting where the juice had touched them. 
Urticacece. —The Nettle tribe takes its name from the stinging 
nettle, a plant generally looked upon as worse than useless, 
although, from the quantity of fibre it contains, it is quite possible 
that it may become a cultivated and useful plant, as are many of 
its relatives, such as the hop, hemp, fig, and mulberry. 
Coniferce. —The Pir tribe is of enormous service to man, providing 
a large quantity of timber, a large proportion of the raw material 
used in the manufacture of paper, Stockholm tar, pitch, and also 
resin and turpentine. Amongst the members of the tribe are the 
pine, fir, larch, juniper, and yew; and it is to this tribe that 
we are chiefly indebted for coal. Dr. Carpenter says that “ the 
immense masses of coal which now contribute so much in every way 
to the comfort and social improvement of the human race are hut 
remains of vast forests chiefly if not entirely of the pine and fir 
kind.” 
This order completes the first class, the Dicotyledones, and it 
will easily be understood that it is extremely difficult to condense so 
vast a subject into an hour’s paper, and that in order to do so, not 
only must very little be said of those plants which are mentioned, 
hut that the mere mention of very many plants of great interest 
must be omitted altogether. 
