ALABASTER. 
nine inches broad; its male flowers issue from 
between the leaves, on foot-stalks three inches 
long, and form a close spike or column, lying over 
one another like the scales of fishes; the female 
flowers grow at a distance from the male flowers, 
and exhibit a long funnel-shaped tube, spreading 
at the top, and divided there into twelve reflexed 
parts ; and the seed-vessel is a compressed, ligne- 
ous capsule, divided by deep furrows into twelve 
cells containing each one large, round, compressed 
seed,—and when the capsule is ripe, it bursts 
with elastic force, flinging the seeds to a distance, 
and making the peculiar explosive sound which 
procured for the plant the specific designation of 
Crepitans. The Ajuapar, from the great size and 
the fine verdure of its leaves, constitutes a beau- 
tiful variety in a collection of tender shrubs ; and 
when kept warm, and duly watered, it retains its 
leaves and its verdure throughout the year. Its 
capsules were early used by the West Indians to 
contain sand for writing ; and hence the name of 
sand-box-tree. But the eminent and, at the same 
time, fearful property of the plant is its abound- 
ing in a very poisonous juice, which possesses the 
appearance and some of the qualities of milk. 
This juice is used to poison the water of rivers, 
in order that large quantities of fish may be killed 
and obtained ; and when recently drawn from the 
plant, it produces very pernicious effects, resem- 
bling the symptoms and pains of erysipelas, by its 
mere exhalations, upon persons examining it, or 
remaining for a few hours in the same house in 
which it is placed. “This vegetable sap,” says 
M. Boussingault, “would perfectly resemble that 
of the cow-tree, if it were not slightly yellowish. 
It has no smell; its taste, which is very little 
marked at first, soon causes very violent irrita- 
tion. It reddens the colour of turmeric; mineral 
acids produce in it a white and viscous curd ; the 
surrounding fluid is clear and of a yellow colour. 
Left to itself, the milky sap of the Hura crepitans 
yields all the products of the putrefaction of 
caseum. It contains an azotised substance 
similar to gluten or caseum, a vesicating oil, a 
crystallized substance having an alkaline reac- 
tion, malate of potash, nitrate of potash, a salt of 
lime (the malate ?), and an odorous azotised prin- 
ciple.” [Boussingault’s Rural Economy. | 
ALABASTER. A fine and beautiful kind of 
white stone, either carbonate of lime or sulphate 
of lime, used for ornamental purposes. The ala- 
baster box of the ancients contained perfumed 
unguents ; and seems, in many instances, to have 
been manufactured from the stalactitic and sta- 
lagmitic stones of spar caves. The perfumes de- 
posited in the box, as in the case mentioned in 
the history of our Redeemer, were often “ very 
precious,” and were usually employed in the hon- 
ourable anointing of the head of guests. The 
alabaster of modern times is seldom or never 
understood to include either stalactitic matter, 
white marble, or any other form of carbonate of 
lime ; but is identified with the finest and purest 
ALATERNUS. 101 
lithological specimens of gypsum. This is too 
fine and costly for the farmer’s purposes,—differ- 
ing widely from the common, coarse kinds of 
gypsum,—semi-transparent, snow-white, easily 
worked into vases and other ornamental articles, 
but rarely occurring in sufficient masses or of 
sufficient hardness to be used in statuary. The 
best is found in Tuscany; and some rather good 
sorts occur in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and 
are there manufactured into toys and small orna- 
ments. See Gypsum. 
ALATERNUS,—botanically Rhamnus alaternus. 
A number of varieties or sub-species of evergreen 
shrubs or small trees of the Rhamnus or buck- 
thorn family. They appear to the unpractised 
eye to have closer connexion with the genus 
Phillyrea and the genus Ligustrum than with that 
to which they really belong; and though only 
sub-species, they present, to an ignorant or a 
careless observer, as broad apparent differences 
among themselves as those which occur among 
plants of totally unconnected genera. Miller 
treats them as constituting a genus of them- 
selves; not a few nurserymen have confounded 
some of them with the genus Phillyrea; and a 
very general popular opinion assigns to some or 
all of them the names of blotched phillyrea, 
mock-privet, and evergreen privet. Any eye, 
however, can at a glance distinguish them from 
plants of the phillyrea or mock-privet family by 
the alternate position of their leaves,—the fea- | 
ture, in fact, to which they owe their name; and 
any botanical observer instantly detects them to 
belong to a totally different genus, by the struc- 
ture of their flowers. Their features of distinc- 
tion from ligustrum or common privet are still 
more obvious. 
Three principal sub-species of alaternus are 
cultivated,—the common, the broad-leaved, and 
the jagged-leaved. The common alaternus is re- 
markable for the number of its established and 
known varieties, and for the freedom with which, 
when raised from seed, it sports into new varie- 
ties. 
and distinctly marked varieties are the larger 
alaternus, the smaller alaternus, the gold-striped 
alaternus, the silver-striped alaternus, and the 
blotched-leaved alaternus,—the last very gener- 
ally called the blotched-leaved phillyrea. The 
ordinary sorts of the common alaternus have 
oval, crenated, lucid-green, and. very beautiful 
leaves; and in April they produce, in little clus- 
ters and from the wings of the leaves, greenish- 
coloured flowers, which are followed by berries. 
The variegated sorts not only display a pleasing 
diversity of colour during summer, but so singu- 
larly alter their appearance in winter that some 
are brown, others are red, and others are green 
on their shaded side and red on their sunned 
side-—The broad-leaved alaternus greatly excels 
in appearance all the varieties of the common 
alaternus; and it may either be kept down to 
the condition of an undershrub, or sent easily 
The chief of the old or long-established. 
