436 BITTERSWEET. 
effect, occasions gummy matter to glide from the 
stomach and pass through the intestines without 
yielding more than a mere fraction of its nutri- 
tiousness, and causes food of a watery kind, such 
as cattle obtain in moist meadows and wet pas- 
tures, to produce rot and several other diseases. 
The highly nourishing powers of both gum and 
sugar upon man and the lower animals, and the 
highly fattening power of succulent herbage upon 
|, cattle, are thus altogether dependent on the diges- 
tive aid of bitters. But if used as more than a 
mere condiment to the healthy stomach, or as a 
tonic for the restoration of impaired powers of 
digestion, bitters enrich the secretion, increase 
| the blood, create a plethoric habit, and originate 
inflammatory action and other forms of disease. 
Bitters act most beneficially, in cold and damp 
districts, for preventing ague and intermittent, 
| fever, or, in a warm and debilitating climate, for 
| preventing languor. 
| and prevalence of leanness among the live stock 
The frequency of disease 
of a farm, may often be very distinctly traceable 
to the want of a sufficient intermixture of bit- 
terish plants in the herbage; and the tendency 
_to aguish disorders among the inhabitants of 
| fenny districts might often be in a great degree 
counteracted, by the general and judicious use of 
bitters in spring and autumn. 
BITTERSWEET,—botanically Solanum Dul- 
camara. A perennial deciduous climbing plant, 
of the nightshade genus. It is sometimes called 
perennial climbing nightshade. It grows wild in 
hedges and thickets, near rivers and ditches, and 
in other damp and shady situations in Great 
Britain. Its stem is woody, of a bluish colour, 
| about three feet in length, but capable of being 
trained to ten feet, and emitting, when bruised 
or broken, a disagreeable odour similar to that of 
rotten eggs; its flowers have a beautiful violet 
or purple colour, with yellow streaks in their 
middle, and appear in June and July; and its 
berries are oblong-oval, red, juicy, bitter, and 
poisonous, and become ripe in August. ‘Two 
varieties with respectively white and variegated 
flowers also grow wild in Britain, and have a 
taller habit than the normal plant. Bittersweet 
is sometimes planted in gardens in the vicinity of 
London, to cover arbours or shady walls, in situ- 
ations where few other climbing plants will grow; 
and cuttings or small stems of it are sometimes 
placed in glasses of water in rooms, and they 
there continue for a long time green and growing, 
and putting out leavesand branches. A decoction 
of the sliced stem and young shoots has long been 
known as a medicine, but is far too active to be 
used by a quack or a mere domestic practitioner. 
BITTER VETCH, —botanically Orodus. A 
genus of herbaceous ornamental plants, of the 
pea tribe. About fifty species are known to 
botanists; and between thirty and forty of these 
exist in a living state in Great Britain. One of 
BITTER VETCH. 
the loose - flowered, the beautiful, the hairy, 
and the lathyrus-like, have one-paired leaves, 
with ovate or linear leaflets, and most of the 
others have many-paired leaves, with in some 
instances broad leaflets, and in others very nar- 
row leaflets ;—three, the tuberous, the sylvan, 
and the black, are indigenous in Britain, and 
most of the others are natives of continental Ku- 
rope. Nearly all the native and introduced spe- 
cies deserve a place in the flower garden, on ac- 
count of their elegant papilionaceous flowers, 
and will grow on any soil, and can easily be pro- 
pagated either from seeds or by dividing the 
roots; but in no instance are they equal to any 
of our present field legumes or agricultural plants. 
We can afford a fuller notice of only two of the 
indigenous and one of the exotic species as ex- 
emplifications of the genus. 
The tuberous species, or common bitter vetch, 
or heath pea, Orobus tuberosus, grows wild in 
mountainous woods and pastures, affords to the 
hardy highlander both luxury and food, and may 
be regarded as a culinary plant of the Welsh and 
Scottish Highlands. Its root is creeping, knobbed, 
externally blackish, and internally sweet and nu- 
tritious; its stem is simple, erect, compressed, 
winged, and about a foot high; its leaves are 
alternate, smooth, darkish green, and compound, 
consisting of two or three pairs of elliptico-lan- 
ceolate leaflets, and a projecting axis; its flowers 
have a purple ground-colour, with brilliant varie- 
gations of crimson, blue, and flesh-colour, and 
are produced in long-stalked, loose, axillary clus- 
ters; and its pods are long, cylindrical, and pen- 
dulous, and become black when ripe. 
The sylvan species, Orobus sylvaticus, grows 
wild in the mountainous woods of Great Britain, 
and is particularly abundant in Cumberland and 
Wales. Its root is woody, tough, and deeply set 
in the soil; its stems are numerous, recumbent | 
or spreading, hairy, somewhat branched, and 
about two feet in length; its leaves grow from 
the joints of the stems, and have each about ten 
or eleven pairs of ovate-lanceolate leaflets, ranged 
close to one another along the midrib; its floral 
footstalks rise from the wings of the leaves, and 
are three inches in length; its flowers grow in a 
close spike or cluster, are cream-coloured, crim- 
son-streaked, and purple-tipped, and appear from 
May till July; and its pods are compressed, 
ovate - oblong, and comparatively shorter than 
those of most of the other species. 
The Pyrenean species, Orobus pyrenaicus, grows 
wild on the Pyrenean mountains, and was intro- 
duced thence to Great Britain about the close of 
the 17th century. Several stems rise from one 
root, and are smooth, branched, and about two 
feet in height; each leaf consists of four pairs of 
spear-shaped leaflets, each of which has three 
longitudinal veins; the floral footstalks are long, 
and rise from the wings of the leaves; the flowers 
the latter, the rock species, is a hardy annual, | have a purple colour, are ranged in a loose spike 
and all the others are hardy perennials ;—four, | toward the upper part of the stem, and appear in 
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