fhe 
432 THOMASIA. 
is a perennial-rooted indigen of the road-sides 
and cultivated fields of Britain; and is very 
troublesome, and not a little difficult of extirpa- 
tion. Its root is fleshy and very vivacious, and 
both creeps far and strikes deep, so as to resist 
every slight or ordinary effort to destroy it; its 
stem is from 2 to 4 feet high; its leaves are ses- 
sile; and its flowers are purple and subsolitary, 
and bloom in July.—The dwarf or stemless plume 
thistle, Cirstwm acaule, is a perennial-rooted in- 
digen of the cultivated lands of Britain, particu- 
larly of grass lands which have a light soil. Its 
root is woody and runs deep into the ground ; its 
stem is the mere root-crown, or rather is entirely 
a-wanting; its leaves are large, bright green, and 
sessile, and spread close to the ground in a circle 
of nearly a foot in diameter, and choke all grasses 
and other herbage within their range; and its 
flowers are purple and subsolitary, and bloom in 
July and August.—Forster’s plume thistle, or 
the branching bog plume thistle, Cirsewm For- 
stert, is a perennial-rooted indigen of the bogs 
‘and moist woodlands of some parts of England. 
Its root is tapering; its stem is 3 or 4 feet 
high ; and its flowers have a crimson colour, and 
bloom in July and August. 
THISTLE (Star). See Star Tuistix. 
THISTLE (Way). See Saw-worr and Tuistim 
(Piump). 
THLASPI. See Suppuery’s Purss. 
THOMASIA. <A genus of ornamental, ever- 
green, Australian shrubs, of the byttneria family. 
Six or seven species, some apetalous, others with 
white, pink, or purple flowers, most about 3 feet 
high, and all loving a soil of sandy peat, and 
propagable from cuttings, have been introduced 
to the gardens of Britain. The large stipuled 
species, 7’. stipulacea, introduced in 1844, may 
be taken as a specimen of the whole. Its leaves 
stand on long footstalks, and are heart-shaped, 
hairy, and deeply notched ; and its flowers come 
out in little racemose clusters opposite the leaves, 
and are large and lean all one way, and have a 
pink colour with a shady suffusion of light pur- 
ple, and bloom in profusion toward autumn. 
Most of the other species, however, bloom from 
April till July. 
THORAX. The chest-cavity of an animal’s 
body, containing the lungs, the heart, and part 
of the windpipe and the gullet. It is divided 
into two parts by a duplicature of the pleura, 
and separated from the abdomen by the dia- 
phragm. 
THORN. Any ligneous plant which possesses 
a spinous armature,—but particularly the haw- 
thorn and other indigenous, economical, spinous 
shrubs and small trees. See the articles Haw- 
THORN and Spine. 
THORN. A spinous process, whether the true 
spine of such plants as thistles, or the woody, spear- 
like armature of the hawthorn and other power- 
fully prickly shrubs. A thorn, as distinguished 
from a spine, grows only on ligneous plants, and has 
THORN-APPLE. 
a woody nature, and may be regarded as an abor- 
tive, indurated, sharply-pointed bud. When a 
thorn pierces a horse, and breaks, and remains 
in the wound, it ought with all possible speed to 
be drawn out with small pincers, and, if neces- 
sary, first loosened and made easily extractable 
by means of an incision; and, if it cannot be re- 
moved, or if it be neglected till inflammation set 
in, poultices should be applied to encourage sup- 
puration. 
THORN - APPLE, — botanically Datura. A 
genus of ornamental, hardy, annual plants, of 
the nightshade family. Nearly a dozen species 
occur in British collections,—principally natives 
of America, China, and Northern Africa; and 
most are about 2 or 3 feet high, and have white 
flowers, and love a soil of rich mould, and bloom 
from June or July till September, and possess 
very active properties of a poisonous or dan- 
gerously medicinal nature; but two, the Tatula 
and the proud, have respectively blue and purple 
flowers,—and the first of these, and also the 
Stramonium and the fierce, thrive best in a light 
soil. 
Stramonium or the common thorn-apple, Da- 
turo stramonium, is the best known species, and 
has a place in the pharmacopceias, and may serve 
as a sufficient specimen of the whole genus. It 
is a native of America, and was introduced to 
Britain, by way of Constantinople, toward the 
close of the 16th century, and is now naturalized, 
so as to grow in a wild state among the rubbish 
of waste grounds, of dunghills, of road-sides, and 
of the vicinity of gardens. Its stem is cylindri- 
cal, branching, dichotomous above, spreading, 
leafy, and 2 or 3 feet high; its leaves spring on 
long cylindrical footstalks from the forks of the 
stem, and are large, triangularly ovate, unequal 
at the base, sinuated on the margin, dark green 
above, and pale below; its flowers stand on short 
erect footstalks, and are solitary, axillary, and 
large, and have a white funnel-shaped plaited 
corolla, and bloom from July till September ; 
and its fruit are large, fleshy, somewhat ovate 
capsules, armed with sharp, awl-shaped spines, 
and containing a great number of compressed 
kidney-shaped seeds. The whole plant emits a 
fetid, narcotic, sickening odour; and the leaves, 
the capsule, and the seeds possess very fierce 
narcotic, stimulating, and poisonous properties. 
Stramonium, when eaten by mistake, has pro- 
duced fatal effects; and when cautiously ad- 
ministered, in the way of potion, has produced 
bewilderment and stupefaction, and aided some 
of the most horrid designs of wicked men; and 
when smoked in the manner of tobacco, relieves 
the paroxysms of spasmodic asthma; and when 
intelligently used by physicians, according to 
well-tested pharmaceutical formula, in the vari- 
ous forms of extract, powder, tincture, ointment, 
and cataplasm, has been found to act beneficially 
in a number of widely different diseases. But it 
is eminently one of the class of terrible drugs 
