72 
SELECTED ARTICLES. 
The small family of Cedrelese, to which appertains the 
genus Cedrela, has been established by R. Brown to accom- 
modate some genera formerly placed in that of the Meliacese. 
M.M. Decandolle, Blame, and Ad. de Jussieu, who have 
made these genera an especial study, do not consider the 
Cedreleae but as a simple tribe of the Meliaceae. Among the 
genera which compose it, we will cite Cedrela swietenia, 
and Kaya. These are all large and beautiful trees, the wood 
of which is generally fragrant, and of a reddish tint, with 
veins. They all possess, in their different parts, more or less 
astringency and bitterness of taste, frequently united with an 
aromatic principle. Thus the bark of these trees, and parti- 
cularly that of the Swietenia febrifuga, Roxb., of the Kaya 
senegalensis, Ad. de J., and even of the Swietenia mahagoni, 
is tonic and febrifuge. But in no other species is this pro- 
perty as well marked as in the bark of the Cedrela febrifuga, 
of Blume. 
This tree, as has been stated, attains colossal proportions, 
and grows in the forests of Amboina, of Timor, and Java. 
Its bark is in pieces, either flat or partially rolled, sometimes 
partly deprived of their epidermis. Their thickness is about 
two lines. The external surface, in the pieces that still retain 
the epidermis, is smooth, or irregular from fissures crossing 
each other at angles, of a clear gray color, due in part to the 
lichens that cover it. In those deprived of epidermis, this 
color is near to that of canella. The internal face is shining, 
equal, and of a yellow tint; the fracture is very fibrous, taste 
bitter and astringent, smell faint, and somewhat like that of 
oak bark. Professor Nees de Esenbeck has published an 
analysis of this bark, in which he has found an astringent 
principle of a resinous nature ; another principle, equally 
astringent, but soluble in water, and consequently of a gummy 
nature; a gummy extractive matter, and some traces of 
inuline. 
Horsfield is the first who, in 1816, made use of the bark of 
suren, or Cedrela febrifuga. He employed it with much 
advantage in the last stages of dysentery, (a disease so com- 
