Dicotyledons with Incomplete Flowers — Etiphorbiacece. 
93 
sessile clusters, each with a simple 4-leaved perianth ; several staminate flowers surrounding a central pistillate one : 
in Mercury (Mercurialis) with a simple (monochlamydeous) perianth: in Purging-Nut (Jatropha Gurcas), and other 
exotic species, with distinct calyx and corolla (dichlamydeous). 
OVARY almost invariably 3-celled; in Mercury 2-celled. 
FRUIT separating when ripe from the persistent axis into its constituent carpels, which usually open elastically 
to liberate the seed ; in Sandbox (Suva crepitans) with such force as to occasion a loud explosion. 
Seeds with copious fleshy albumen, solitary as in Spurge, or in pairs as in Box ; embryo usually large, with 
flat leafy cotyledons exceeding the radicle as in Castor Oil ( Ricinus ). 
USES, &c.—The milky juice characterising this Natural Order is usually associated with a volatile principle, 
more or less acrid, and often hurtful or poisonous, but generally dissipated by heat. The most important food- 
producing plants of the Order are the Tropical American species of Manihot ( M . utilissima and M. Aipi), affording 
Cassava or Mandiocca meal and Tapioca. These farinaceous substances are obtained from the large fleshy roots ; 
those of Bitter Cassava weighing from 30 to 40 lbs. : the venomous juice is expelled by pressure, washing and heat. 
Tapioca is the pure starch deposited by the water in which the cassava has been washed. This starchy matter is 
heated [upon iron plates, and thus collects into the irregular small granular masses in which it is usually sold. 
The milky juice of species of Siphonia growing in Guiana and Brazil affords the best American caoutchouc. The 
juice is collected from wounds in the bark and allowed to dry in successive layers over moulds of clays, the clay 
being removed when the deposit is sufficiently thick and firm. Castor oil, obtained from the seeds of Ricinus, a 
native originally of India, but now everywhere between the Tropics ; Croton oil, from the seeds of Groton Tiglium , 
another Indian plant, and the bark of Groton Elutheria of the-West Indies, are the more important drugs afforded 
by the Order. A vegetable tallow is collected in China for candle-making from the surface of the seeds of Stillingia 
sebifera. To Euphorbiacese (?) we owe African Teak (Oldficldia africana), a timber used in ship-building, and the 
hard dense wood of the Box (Buxus sempervirens), admirably adapted for the use of wood-engravers. 
But few Euphorbiaceae are cultivated in our gardens, the flowers usually being insignificant; in a few species 
of Spurge the glands of the involucre or the bracts assume a brilliant scarlet, as in Euphorbia splendens and E. 
Bojeri, of Madagascar, and E. fulgens and E. {Poinsettia) pulcherrima, of Mexico. Cocliceum variegatum is grown 
in hot-houses for the sake of its beautifully variegated foliage, and a few species of Phyllccnthus for their elegant 
habit. Ccelebogyne ilicifolia , an Australian shrub with dioecious flowers, cultivated many years in European 
gardens, has acquired much notoriety from the circumstance that pistillate flowers only being borne by the cultivated 
plants, it nevertheless continues to afford mature seeds capable of germination. 
