460 
BLUEBELL. 
BLUEBELL. Any native British plant which 
produces blue bell-shaped flowers. ‘Two species 
of campanula, and three species of squills appear 
to be the chief sharers of the name; and one of 
these species of squills, the nutans or non-scripta, 
appears to share most largely both this name and 
that of harebell. It grows wild in woods, on 
streamlet banks, and in other shady places in Great 
Britain, and is one of the most beautiful and fra- 
grant of our native plants,—sometimes profusely 
adorning a considerable stretch of bank, diffusing 
an exquisite and very delicate fragrance, and 
looking almost like a reduced copy of the dark 
blue varieties of the oriental hyacinth. Its root 
is a white, coated, globular, acrid bulb; its leaves 
are linear, channelled, and shining, and droop in 
their upper half; its flower-stem is succulent, 
about nine inches long, upright in the lower 
half, and drooping in the upper; and its flowers 
are blue, pendulous, campanulate, arranged in a 
spike like those of a hyacinth, and appear from 
March till June. The bulb loses its acridity by 
drying; and, when reduced to powder, serves the 
same purpose as gum arabic in the art of dyeing, 
BLUEBOTTLE,—hbotanically Centaurea Cyanus. 
A beautiful annual British weed, of the centaury, 
knapweed, or sweet sultan genus. It grows in 
corn fields, rising to the height of three feet, de- 
lighting the florist with its beauty, but disgust- 
ing the agriculturist by its laughing indication 
of very careless farming. Its root is fibrous and 
hard; its stem is whitish and firm; its leaves 
are whitish-green and narrow; and its flowers 
are blue, and appear from June till August. 
The plant is sometimes called blue-bonnet, corn- 
flower, matfellon, wound-herb, and hurt-sickle ; 
and is occasionally admitted to a place in some 
of the finest plots of a villa flower-garden. An 
infusion of its flowers is slightly diuretic; a de- 
| coction of them with galls and copperas forms a 
good writing ink ; and the expressed juice of 
them, when mixed with a cold solution of alum, 
forms a permanent water-colour in painting. 
The leaves have some popular reputation as 
styptics, but are really worthless. 
BLUE VITRIOL, or Buvz Stonz, — properly 
Sulphate of Copper. A metallic salt, obtained by 
evaporating the cupreous water of some copper 
mines, or by roasting copper pyrites, and expos- 
ing them to the action of air and moisture. In 
the former case, native sulphurets of copper pass, 
by exposure to a moist atmosphere, into sulphate 
of copper; and, in the latter, the compound is 
oxidized, the sulphur acidulates into sulphuric 
acid, and sulphate of copper is evolved. This 
salt is largely crystalline, beautifully blue, and 
perfectly pellucid or semitransparent. It has 
a very acrid, harsh, styptic taste, is inodorous, 
and always reddens vegetable blues. It acts 
very powerfully and somewhat hazardously as a 
human medicine,—internally as a tonic, an as- 
tringent, an emetic, and an antidote to poisoning 
with laudanum,—and externally, to consume 
BOERHAAVIA. 
fungus, and to give a healthy stimulus to indo- 
lent foul ulcers. In farriery, it is extremely use- 
ful as a mild caustic and detergent, and as an 
excellent application to almost all kinds of ulcers, 
disposing them to heal sooner than if they were 
plied with almost any of the other known reme- 
dies. When used in substance, it ought to be 
reduced to a fine powder, and sprinkled on the 
ulcers; but it is best used in a state of solution, 
—prepared by saturating boiling-hot water with 
the powder, and used either diluted or undiluted 
according to the particular circumstances of each 
case. This solution, especially if applied hot, is 
probably the best known remedy for the excoria- 
tions and wounded ligaments of bad broken knees 
of horses. Small doses of blue vitriol are some- 
times administered internally to horses as a tonic; 
but they are very dangerous, and ought not to be 
employed. A drachm of it, dissolved in a little 
gruel, and applied by rubbing, is sometimes use- 
ful in prolonged discharge from the nostrils of 
the ox; and one or two grains of it have some- 
times removed the sniffles from rabbits. 
BOAR. ‘The male of the swine. See Hoe. 
BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. See Acricut- 
TURAL SOCInTIES. 
BOAT-PLOUGH. See Proven. 
BOCCONIA. A genus of tender, evergreen, 
ornamental shrubs, of the poppy-flowered tribe. 
The frutescent or branching bocconia, also called 
frutescent celandine, Bocconia frutescens, 1s very 
common in Jamaica and several parts of Amer- 
ica, and was introduced to Great Britain from 
the West Indies in 1739. Sir Hans Sloane, in his 
Natural History of Jamaica, calls it greater tree 
celandine with oak leaves. It grows to the 
height of 10 or 12 feet; its stem is straight, as 
thick as a man’s arm, and covered with a white 
smooth bark; several branches diverge from the 
top of the stem, and are embellished with alter- 
nately placed leaves; the leaves are of a fine 
glaucous colour, eight or nine inches in length, 
five or six inches in breadth, and deeply sinuated, 
sometimes almost to the midrib; and the flowers 
have a whitish yellow colour, and appear from 
January till April. This plant possesses singular 
beauty, makes an imposing feature in a collec- 
tio of exotics, and ought to have a place in 
every tolerably extensive hothouse. Hernandez 
informs us that the Indian kings planted it in 
their gardens. A yellow acrid juice, similar to 
that of the greater celandine, abounds in every 
part of the plant; and is used by the Americans 
for removing warts from the skin and spots from 
the eyes. — Another species, called the entire- 
leaved, Bocconia integrifolia, was introduced to 
Great Britain from Mexico in 1820; but this, 
though also an evergreen and of similar habits 
to the frutescent species, usually grows to the 
height of only about four feet. 
BOERHAAVIA. A genus of tender, ever- 
green, ornamental plants, of the Nyctagineze 
tribe. Nearly forty species are known to botan- 
