a a ae” TE PT ODO aE 
| CEA. 
ALEHOOF. 
Hops,when the climate issuitable, are easily grown. 
A cottager may either raise four plants on a square 
yard of ground, to climb four poles of twelve or fif- 
teen feet in height ; or plant five or six roots round 
an arbour; or so place several roots that a plant 
may climb each column of the rustic veranda of 
his cottage. The buck-bean plant or marsh tre- 
foil, Menyanthes trifoliata, was formerly used as 
a substitute for hops in this country, and is still 
so used on the continent; it is easily cultivated 
in moist soil; and one ounce of its dried leaves is 
| equivalent to half a pound of hops. All the plants 
of the same natural order as menyanthes, parti- 
cularly the plants Gentiana rubra, Gentiana lutea, 
and Gentiana purpurea, might also be substituted 
for hops; and the roots of one of these, Gentiana 
lutea, are used in the distillation of a spirit in 
Switzerland. The dried roots of the herb-bennet, 
so common in the hedges of England, are sliced, 
enclosed in a thin linen bag, and suspended in 
the beer cask, by the brewers of Germany, to 
prevent the beer from turning sour, and to give 
it the flavour of cloves. A similar use—as we 
have already hinted when speaking of adultera- 
tion—is made of ginger, capsicum, orange peel, 
coriander-seed, carraway seed, and calumus aro- 
maticus; and powerfully astringent bitter quali- 
ties might probably be extracted also from several 
plants of the genera Agrimonia, Dryas, Comarum, 
Potentilla, and Tormentilla; yet—to show how 
eminently dangerous it is to drug with even 
well-known herbs—the roots of the last of these 
genera, the plants of tormentilla, are so very power- 
| fully astringent and constipating that the decoc- 
_ tion of a few drachms of them, administered in a 
_ series of doses, has become a prescription of the 
highest medical practice for arresting the most 
violent diarrhoeal action of the bowels,—so that 
the ignorant use of any such astringent plants in 
domestic economy might be followed by conse- 
quences, not only detrimental to health, but haz- 
ardous to life—Child on Brewing.—Combrune’s 
Theory and Practice of Brewing. — Thomson’s 
Chemistry—Accum on Adulteration of Food.— 
Anderson’s Commercial Dictionary.—See articles 
Brrr and Brewine, Hors, and Matr. 
ALEHOOF—botanically GuecHoma HrpEra- 
A well known creeping perennial plant,— 
called also turnhoof, ground-ivy, and gill-go-by- 
the-ground,—and formerly designated by botan- 
ists Hedera terrestris. It creeps under hedges, 
upon the sides of banks, at the foot of trees, and 
in most shady places, in almost every district of 
England; and it is powerfully stoloniferous, and 
forms a new root at every joint of its stems, in 
the same manner as strawberry plants. Its roots 
are fibrous; its flowers are blue, and appear in 
spring ; and its leaves are roundish and notched, 
and become purple during the progress of the 
season. Alehoof was a chief ingredient in the 
manufacture of ale by the ancient Saxons; and 
it still continues to be occasionally used by the 
poor for infusion in ale or beer, as a remedy 
a a 
ALG ZK. Ala 
against internal disorders. Herbalists—those 
clownish quacks and guilty tamperers with dis- 
ease—assert that the plant heals wounds, both by 
outward application and by inward use; that a 
decoction of it, drank daily for a considerable 
period, cleanses the stomach, sweetens the blood, 
and promotes the healthy secretions; that a de- 
coction or an infusion of it is a strengthening 
eye-water; that an infusion of it operates as a 
diuretic, and alleviates diseases of the lungs and 
chest ; that applications of it are very strength- 
ening to weak backs; that an ointment made 
from it heals ulcers and fistula; and that equal 
quantities of alehoof, daisies, and celandine, 
strained and used as an eye-wash, remove all de- 
scriptions of inflammations and ophthalmic sores. 
ALGAI. The large tribe of cryptogamic plants, 
which comprises the sea-weeds of the ocean and 
the small flowerless vegetable growths of fresh 
water. The name properly means flags, and ori- 
ginally designated plants or herbs growing in 
sea-water ; but it has been extended by botanists 
to include all vegetables with frondose herbage, 
many of which are not even aquatics. But the 
very large family of Lichens, which have little 
resemblance to the rest of the tribe, and possess 
distinct characteristics and considerable impor- 
tance of their own, have recently, with the gen- | 
eral consent of the botanists of the present day, 
been detached from the algee, and erected into a 
separate tribe. See Licumns. Yet the alge, even 
when freed from the incongruous association of 
the lichens, are exceedingly diversified, and can- 
not be comprehensively defined by any more 
minute characteristic than their frondose leafage. 
Some are visible to the naked eye only when they 
exist in heaps; and some are hard, strong leathery 
masses, many fathoms in length, and occasionally — 
so luxuriant and multitudinous as to take entire 
possession of sections of the sea, and completely 
impede the course of ships. Any distinct root is 
either undiscoverable as a support for their fronds ; 
or, when it does exist, as in the case of many of 
the fuci, it is merely a fibrous or scutate base, 
not for organic support or nourishment, but 
merely for mechanical attachment. Even the 
frond is far from being of uniform appearance in 
the different divisions of the tribe; for in the 
tremellineze, it is gelatinous,—in the confervee, it 
is thread-like and jointed,—and, in the fuci, it is 
leather-like and jointless. 
Professor Agardh, in his work called ‘ Systema 
Algarwm, defines the algze as “aquatic plants 
destitute of cotyledons and of sexual organs ; 
gelatinous, membranous, or coriaceous ; filamen- 
tous, laminose, or even leafy; in colour green, 
purple, or olivaceous ; jointed or continuous; 
bearing sporidie, either included in pericarps, 
or scattered over the surface ;’ and he divides 
them into the six sub-tribes of Diatomeze, Nos- 
tochine, Confervoidese, Ulvacez, Florideze, and 
Fucoideze. The Diatomeze comprise six genera, 
and are bodies of various forms, flat, crystalline, 
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