| and 220 hardy species. 
ASPHYXIA. 
grows to the height of 3 feet, has a leafy stem, 
produces yellow flowers in May and June, and 
admits of easy culture and rapid increase. A 
deciduous variety of this species, attaining a 
height of only 2 feet, and producing its flowers 
in April and May, was introduced from Siberia 
in 1829. The upright and the onion-leaved spe- 
cies, albus and fistulosus, are likewise old and well 
known plants of British horticulture ; they were 
introduced from the south of Europe about the 
time of the introduction of the yellow species: 
they closely resemble the evergreen variety of 
that species in habits and character; they grow 
to the height of respectively 18 and 24 inches ; 
and one or both overrun vast tracts of land in 
Apulia, and there afford a valuable subsistence 
for sheep. The club-seeded species is a tender 
annual, of a foot in height, introduced from the 
East Indies in 1808; the proliferous species is a 
curious hardy annual of 4 inches in height, intro- 
duced from Armenia in 1824; the small-podded 
species is a hardy bulbous plant, the only bulbous 
one of the genus, introduced from Dalmatia in 
1831; and most of the other species and varieties 
resemble the old-introduced ones in habits and 
character, and are natives of Tauria, Siberia, 
Spain, and Candia.—The order asphodelez com- 
prises no fewer than 51 genera; and has, within 
the gardens of Great Britain, about 300 tender 
A few of its species 
have arborescent stems, some have fasciculated 
roots, a considerable number are bulbous, many 
are very beautiful, and all are at least pretty. 
The greater portion have so distinctive a charac- 
ter as to be easily recognised ; but some cannot, 
without a knowledge and inspection of minute 
botanical characteristics, be distinguished from 
some plants of other orders. They are broadly 
separated from the rush tribe by their compara- 
tively large and showy flowers,—from the lily 
tribe, by exactly the reverse character, the com- 
parative smallness of their flowers,—and from 
the hemerocallideze or day-lily tribe, by the ex- 
pansion of their flowers; but they can be dis- 
tinguished from the colchicum tribe only by the 
minute character cf their style and anthers. One 
of two great subdivisions of them are represented 
by the numerous onion genus, and have no true 
stem, and consist entirely of bulbous species ; and 
| the other subdivision are the proper asphodeléz, 
and have for the most part clustered fleshy roots. 
—Loudon’s Hortus Britannicus.—The Penny Cyclo- 
pedia.—Miller’s Gardener's Dictionary. Mawe’s 
Gardener's Calendar—Loudon’s Encyc. of Plants. 
ASPHYXIA. Suspended animation produced 
by the non-conversion of the venous blood into 
arterial blood. Owing to the supply of air being 
cut off, the unchanged venous blood of the pul- 
monary artery presses into the minute radicles 
of the pulmonary veins; but their peculiar irri- 
tability requiring arterial blood to excite them, 
stagnation takes place in the pulmonary radicles, 
and death occurs chiefly from this cause. As- 
ASPIDIUM. 
phyxia of the new-born of any animal is oftea 
dependent upon its feeble condition not permit- 
ing respiration to be established. Asphyxia by 
noxious inhalation takes place in some cases by 
the inhalation of gases, which produce a spas- 
modic closure of the glottis; in others, by the 
want of oxygen; and in others by the presence 
of gases positively deleterious or poisonous. As- 
phyxia by submersion occurs in the case of 
drowned animals in consequence of the medium 
in which they are plunged being unfit for res- 
piration. 
ASPIDIUM,—popularly Shield-fern. An ex- 
tensive genus of ferns, of the polypody tribe. 
About 165 species have been described by botan- 
ists; and about 60 of these are either indigenous 
in Great Britain, or have been introduced from 
foreign countries, principally the West Indies | 
The name aspidium means ‘a | 
and America. 
little buckler;’ and both this and the popular 
name allude to the form of the indusium. Two 
of the species in Britain have their fronds ter- 
nate; thirteen have their fronds pinnate, and 
their leaves crenate, dentate, or serrated ; fifteen 
have their fronds bipinnatifid ; eighteen have 
their fronds bipinnate; and thirteen have their 
fronds tripinnate or supradecompound. Nearly 
all are ornamental; several are eminently hand- | 
some; and only one or two have the character of 
weeds. ~The male-fern, Aspidium filix-mas, one 
of the bipinnate kind, is at once the coarsest in |. 
form, the most weedy in habit, and the most 
generally known in character. 
woods and shady places in Britain and through- 
out Europe; it grows to the height of 3 feet, and 
fructifies from June till August; and its root 
consists of many matted fibres, which form a 
blackish, scaly, and turfy or ceespitose head, of | 
the thickness of a man’s finger. This plant was 
used in ancient times and during the middle 
ages as a specific for worms; it still holds a place, 
though an obscure one, in such standard phar- 
maceutical works as Dr. Christison’s Dispensa- 
tory; and it probably shares with scores of other 
species of polypodiaceze, the bad pre-eminence of 
being ‘the polypody,’ which some pitiful empirics 
daringly prescribe for diseases of the stomach 
and intestines, to the exclusion, of course, of 
really useful remedies, and the consequent em- 
perilling of the credulous patient. The principal 
other British species, are the Lonchitis, with 
pinnate fronds, and growing to the height of nine 
inches on the acclivities of rocky mountains; the 
Oreopteris, with bipinnatifid fronds, growing 
three feet high on heathy grounds; the Lady 
Fern, with bipinnatifid fronds, growing one foot 
high in marshes; the plashy aspidium, with 
bipinnatifid fronds, growing one foot high in wet 
shady places ; the prickly aspidium and the lobed 
aspidium, with bipinnate fronds, growing two 
feet high in shady ground; the dilated aspidium, 
with bipinnate fronds, growing two feet high in 
wet, shady places ; the brittle or fragile aspidium, 
. NS) 
It is common in | 
| 
