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TALLOW. 
See the articles Surv, Fat, and Om. Tallow is 
used in medicine as an emollient and a demul- 
cent; in pharmacy, to give consistency to plasters 
and ointments; and in the arts, for dressing 
leather, for making candles and soap, and for 
other purposes. Pure tallow is white and taste- 
less, and differs little from pure lard except in 
greater density; but the tallow of commerce is 
very diversified in colour, consistency, sapidity, 
and odour,—and is commonly classified, according 
toits degrees of whiteness and purity, into white 
candle tallow, yellow candle tallow, and soap 
tallow. <A very large quantity is imported into 
‘Britain from various parts of the Continent, and 
particularly from the Russian ports of the Baltic. 
TALLOW (Pinry). A solid vegetable fat, of 
somewhat similar appearance and properties to 
true tallow. It is obtained by boiling the fruit 
of the Vaterca indica in water; and is skimmed 
off in a melted state, and cooled into the form of 
a solid cake. It has generally a white but some- 
times a yellow colour; it is greasy to the touch, 
with some degree of waxiness; it is almost taste- 
less, and has an agreeable odour; and it melts at 
a temperature of 974° Fahrenheit, and therefore 
remains solid in the ordinary climates of even 
some parts of the tropics. It consists, according 
to Dr. Babington, of 77 per cent. of carbon, 123 
of hydrogen, and 104 of oxygen. The tree which 
yields it abounds throughout the western coast 
of Hindostan, at least as far north as the con- 
fines of Canara, and could no doubt afford a suffi- 
cient supply to render it of some commercial 
importance ; and it at the same time exudes a 
resin of the nature of copal, viscous and of a 
dirty white colour when taken from the tree, 
but afterwards solid, brittle, and pulverulent, 
soluble in turpentine, and making as good a var- 
nish as the copal of America. Substances similar 
to tallow and wax are obtained from several 
other ligneous plants. See the articles Wax and 
STILLINGIA. 
TALLOW-TREE. See Tatrow (Prvey). 
TAMARIND,—botanically Tamarindus. A 
small genus of tropical evergreen trees, of the 
dalbergia division of the leguminous order. The 
Indian species, 7’. cndica, is a native of the Hast 
and West Indies, of Arabia, and of Egypt, and 
was introduced to the botanical collections of 
Britain in the former part of the 17th century. 
It is naturally a large, spreading, beautiful tree, 
of about 60 feet in height. Its leaves are abruptly 
pinnate, and comprise each sixteen or eighteen 
pairs of leaflets, and are bright green and downy ; 
its leaflets are sessile, entire, oblong, obtuse, 
half-an-inch long, and one-sixth of an inch broad ; 
its flowers come out in loose bunches of five or 
six from the sides of the branches, and have a 
straw-coloured calyx and yellowish petals, beauti- 
fully veined with red, and bloom in June and 
July; and its pods are thick, compressed, of a 
dull brown colour, and from two to ten inches 
long, and contain each from two to seven flat, 
TAMARISK. 
angular, shining seeds, lodged in a dark-coloured 
pulp. The prepared pods are medicinal and con- 
dimental, and constitute the well-known tama- 
rinds of commerce. They are gathered when 
fully ripe, freed from all shelly fragments, depo- 
sited in layers in a cask, and—in the West Indies 
at least—saturated with syrup; and they require 
to be preserved in air-tight and closely-covered 
vessels. They have an agreeable, acid, sweetish 
taste; and contain, independently of the sugar 
with which they are preserved, citric acid, tartaric 
acid, malic acid, fecula, gum, vegetable jelly, and 
bitartrate of potash; and owe their acid taste 
mainly to their citricacid. They possess cooling 
and gently laxative properties; and, when in- 
fused in hot water and strained, they make a 
very grateful and refreshing beverage for persons 
in fever.—The western species, 7’. occidentalis, is | 
very similar to the Indian, but not so tall, white- 
flowered, and much earlier in bloom.—Both spe- 
cies love a soil of rich mould, and are propagated 
from seeds. 
TAMARISK,—hbotanically Tamarix. A genus 
of calyciflorous plants, principally shrubs, with 
small, entire, scale-like leaves, and small, white, 
pink, or flesh-coloured, spicate or racemose flow- 
ers, constituting the small natural order Tamaris- 
cinee. The plants occur in all the three great 
divisions of the old world,—in both cold coun- 
tries and hot; and they are somewhat nearly 
allied on the one hand to Onagrarie, and on the 
other to Lythraries, but differ from both in some 
very distinct botanical characters of the flowers. 
One species grows wild in Britain; two hardy 
deciduous and three tropical evergreen species 
have been introduced from other countries; and 
about a dozen other species are known. 
The French tamarisk, 7. gallica, occurs natu- 
rally in some parts of the southern coasts of 
England, and is also a native of France, Spain, 
and Italy. It is a deciduous shrub, and com- 
monly attains a height of about 12 or 14 feet. 
Its branches are few, and spread irregularly 
abroad, and are variously upright, horizontal, 
and pendulous; its bark is smooth, and has a 
purplish or deep red colour toward the sun and 
a pale brown colour on the opposite side; its 
leaves are very narrow and very finely scaly, and 
have a rather pale green colour and a very beau- 
tiful appearance; and its flowers have a pale red 
colour, and grow in seemingly very large panicles, 
and bloom from May till October,—but they 
really grow in spikes, and are produced near the 
extremities of the branches on the slender twigs 
all around, and not only are they individually 
very minute, but each of the spikes taken separ- 
ately is rather small. This plant is highly ele- 
gant, and well deserves a place in shrubberies. 
It thrives in any ordinary soil or situation, and 
is easily propagated from cuttings planted in the 
open ground in spring or autumn. Sheep feed. 
greedily upon it for the sake of its salt taste. 
The German tamarisk, 7’. germanica, was intro- 
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