266 
Original Communications. 
sometimes with a fawn coloured epidermis, sometimes deprived of it ; of a 
reddish gray colour, very brittle, and affording, when pulverized, a gray- 
ish powder tinged with red. Odour very feeble ; taste bitter, astringent, 
slightly aromatic. 
Description. — This tree is found abundantly in the western 
and middle states, as far east as Massachusetts, in most of 
the southern states, and in Florida — wherever the soil is suffi- 
ciently moist and gravelly. 
Its height is usually from fifteen to twenty feet, and diame- 
ter four or five inches, but the former sometimes exceeds 
thirty feet, and the latter nine or ten inches. 
The branches which are not very numerous, are regularly 
disposed, partly opposite, and partly arising in fours. The 
leaves are about three inches in length, opposite, dark green 
on their upper surface, whitish underneath, and of an oval 
form. Towards the approach of winter, they change to a 
dull red colour. 
In Pennsylvania and New Jersey the flowers are fully 
blown early in May, whilst the leaves are only beginning to 
unfold themselves. The flowers are of a yellow colour, small 
and aggregated, surrounded by a very large involucre, com- 
posed of four white floral leaves. This latter constitutes the 
great beauty of the flowers, which are very numerous; and 
the tree thus robed in white in the spring of the year, adds 
variety and ornament to the American forest. 
The wood is compact and heavy, and susceptible of a fine 
polish ; but the interior bark both of the root and branches, is 
that which enhances its value to the pharmaceutist. It is ex- 
tremely bitter, and has been long used in the country as a 
remedy in intermittent fevers. As possessing remedial pro- 
perties analogous to Cinchona, and as a substitute for that in- 
valuable exotic in the autumnal fevers which prevail in the 
United States, it is considered by physicians who have em- 
ployed it extensively in their practice, as being unsurpassed 
by any vegetable product, indigenous to this country. Se- 
veral attempts have been made to analyze the bark — to as- 
certain if its virtues existed in a vegetable proximate princi- 
