| useful as an antiseptic. 
106 
are also more digestible, and considerably nutri- 
tive. 
Some veterinary surgeons are known to give fa- 
tigued horses doses of alcoholic carminatives ; and 
some grooms, quite as consistently, give such horses 
liberal doses of downright whisky or gin. Such 
monstrous practices will be regarded by the next 
generation of men with mingled wonder, pity, 
and derision. Administered internally, alcohol, 
| as every one knows, is a stimulant and excitant. 
Externally, it is sometimes useful as a styptic to 
restrain haemorrhage from its property of coagu- 
lating the blood, and at the same time causing 
contraction of the bleeding parts. In burns and 
scalds when the skin is not removed, and in 
sprains and bruises, it acts usefully. It is further 
In case of poisoning by 
spirituous liquors, the most effective remedy, 
after evacuation of the stomach, is a solution of 
acetate of ammonia.— Zhomson’s Chemistry.— 
Ure’s Dictionary. — Liebig’s Chemistry. — Edin- 
burgh Pharmacopeia.—Magazine of Domestic Econ- 
omy.—Dunglisson’s Therapeutics. 
ALDER, —botanically Aunus. A genus of 
hardy, amentaceous trees of the birch tribe. It 
was formerly included in the genus Betula or 
Birch ; but is easily distinguished from that 
| genus by its having only four stamens and wing- 
less fruit ; and it has very properly been treated 
by all recent botanists as a separate genus. ‘The 
principal species are the common alder, Alnus 
glutinosa ; the hoary-leaved, A. encana ; the 
broad-leaved, A. macrophylla ; the Siberian, A. 
Srberica ; the saw-leaved, A. serrulata ; the 
bearded, A. barbata ; the wave-leaved, A. undu- 
| lata ; the glaucous or smooth, A. glauca; the 
red, A. rubra ; the dwarf, A. pumila ; the denti- 
culated, A. denticulata ; the Mexican, A. jorullen- 
sis ; and the heart-leaved, A. cordifolia. But 
the species éncana includes two well-defined va- 
rieties, called the winged and the angular-leaved ; 
and the species glutinosa includes seven very dis- 
tinct varieties,—the silver-striped, A. glutinosa 
foliis argenteis—the emarginate, A. g. emargin- 
ata,—the cut-leaved, A. g. ¢ncisa,—the hawthorn- 
| leaved, A. g. oxyacanthifolia,—the jagged-leaved, 
A. g. laciniata,—the oak-leaved, A. 9. quercifolva, 
—the oblong-leaved, A. g. oblongaia,—and the 
elliptic-leaved, A. g. elliptica. Yet both the com- 
mon species, and two or three others of the best 
known species, sport with such freedom and fre- 
quency, that very numerous varieties might be 
selected. Several of the species have been quite 
recently discovered and introduced, and are very 
little known ; four or five belong to Hurope, and 
all the rest to America; and, excepting some 
varieties of the common species, nearly the whole 
group of alders are untested for economical pur- 
poses, and have hitherto been grown only for 
ornament or from curiosity. 
The common alder (Alnus glutinosa), is very 
generally diffused and known throughout Bri- 
tain, It usually occurs only as a shrub; but, 
ALDER. 
when permitted to grow to maturity, it is a tall, 
massive, and stately tree. Its bark, in the shrubby 
state, is purplish and smooth ; but, in old trees, 
is blackish and much chopped. Its leaves are 
clammy to the touch, dark green in colour, 
roundish in shape, nicked on the margin, and 
somewhat like those of the hazel. The footstalks 
of the leaves are about an inch in length; and 
the leaf-ribs, like those of the lime-tree, have 
spongy balls at the angles of their under side. 
The female catkins are conical, and the male 
catkins cylindrical; and the latter appear in 
autumn, and remain till spring. The alder na- 
turally grows in swamps and meadows in almost 
every part of Europe and of North America, and 
in a large proportion of Asia and of northern 
Africa ; yet though a very decided aquatic, it 
does not thrive in stagnant water, but prospers 
best on the banks of streams, or on elevated and 
drained parts of marshy land. From its large 
and abundant foliage, its deep and glowing ver- 
dure, and its tendency to acquire a decidedly 
good and even picturesque outline, it is well 
fitted for cultivation as an ornamental tree; yet 
it suffers grievous damage in popular opinion 
from accidental association, and, except when 
very lofty and in a particularly fine situation, is 
liable to be scouted as vulgar and disagreeable,— 
“an ugly melancholy tree,” as Boutcher has it. 
Most persons have seen it only in low, dreary, 
dirty situations, dwarfish in stature, deformed 
by accidental fractures, or hacked and disfigured 
by the hatchet ; and they cannot easily imagine 
how beautiful and noble it becomes, when culti- | 
vated with proper care, or even when treated 
with mere forbearance. Many fine specimens of 
it adorn some of the best parks in Great Britain ; 
and thousands of both its shrubs and its trees | 
enrich not a few of the most exquisite river land- 
scapes of at once the quiet, the luscious, the ro- 
mantic, and the grandly imposing character. An 
alder belonging to Mr. Beevor, and growing in 
his garden, measures upwards of 16 feet in cir- 
cumference at four feet from the ground. Several 
very fine alders are noticed by Mr. Marshall as 
growing in the old part of Stowe Gardens, and a 
truly ornamental one as growing by the road 
thence to Buckingham. On the Earl of Carlisle’s 
estate in Cumberland, there is an alder tree 
which, at three feet above the ground, is more 
than nine feet in circumference. Some very 
large alders, looking in the distance like oaks, 
grow in the Bishop of Durham’s park at Bishop- 
Auckland ; some in the Duke of Northumber- 
land grounds at Sion-house; and some in the 
grounds of Gordon-castle in Banfishire. Three 
of those in the last of these places are described 
by Joseph Sabine, Hsq., in the Transactions of the 
London Horticultural Society ; and when exam- 
ined by him, they measured in circumference at 
five and six feet from the ground respectively 
94, 74, and 8 feet, and had a height of respec- 
tively 70, 615, and 58 feet. ‘“ He who would see 
