| awhite flower from June till August. 
548 BROOKWEHED. 
attached to the windpipe of the horse. It offends 
the eye of an observer, but does not seem to 
cause much pain to the animal, or to deteriorate 
his value. It may be attacked by a blister or 
by iodine ointment. 
BRONCHOTOMY. See TracwEoTomy. 
BROOD-MARH. See Marz, and Horss. 
BROOKLIMH, See Buccapunea. 
BROOK W EED,—botanically Samolus. A small 
| genus of evergreen herbaceous plants, of the 
primrose tribe. Valerandis’ species, Samolus vale- 
| randt, grows wild in gravelly marshes in Great 
| Britain, and is also found in New South Wales 
_ and in other ‘parts of the world. It grows with 
us to the height of about nine inches, and carries 
It for- 
merly bore the popular designation of round- 
leaved water pimpernel. Two greenhouse species, 
|| the sea-side and the campanula-like, have re- 
cently been introduced from respectively New 
| South Wales and the Cape of Good Hope; and 
| the latter is called by Thunberg Campanula 
porosa. 
BROOM,—botanically Cytisus. Several species 
_ of branching shrubs, of the genista division of 
| the leguminous tribe, and formerly belonging to 
the genus Spartvwm, but now included in the 
genus Cytisus. The common broom, Cytisus 
scoparivus, formerly Spariium scoparivum, belongs 
_to the same subdivision of Cytisus as the la- 
_ burnum, but is strictly shrubby and very profusely 
| branched. It grows abundantly as a weed in the 
_ dry commons and neglected pastures of Britain ; 
it is extensively sown on hilly grounds as a shelter 
| for game; and on account of its delicate flowers, 
| its flat hairy pods, and especially its curious ap- 
| pearance, it is frequently admitted into shrub- 
beries and gardens. Were it a rare exotic, in- 
stead of being an abundant and troublesome 
weed, it could not fail to be highly esteemed by 
all florists, amateur-cultivators, and landscape- 
gardeners. Its usual height is about six feet; 
its branches are angular, vertical, slender, very 
numerous, very flexible, and coated with a de- 
lightfully green bark; the leaves of the lower 
part of the branches are trifoliate, and those of the 
upper part are single ; the flowers are papiliona- 
| ceous, have a brilliant yellow colour, appear 
| from April till July, stand upon short footstalks, 
| all along the sides of the last year’s shoots from 
top to bottom, and so completely adorn each 
twig as to give the whole shrub a look of mag- 
nificence beyond most of the flowering tribe; 
and its pods are compressed and hairy, and con- 
tain kidney-shaped seeds. 
The branches of this plant, as well as those of 
| other brooms, are very often cut and made into 
| sweeping-brooms ; and they are extensively em- 
ployed also for thatch. The stringy fibres may 
be used for making a kind of ropes, and seem to 
have been employed by the ancients as a sub- 
stitute for flax. The flowers yield a very large 
amount of honey to bees. Mr. Bradley calculated 
BROOM. 
long ago that an acre of broom is worth six 
pounds a-year for the feeding of bees alone, and 
will produce, in addition, a sufficient value of 
withes and stumps to pay the rent. The green 
twigs contain a comparatively large proportion of 
carbonate of potash and other alkaline salts, and 
therefore might be used to fertilize many of the 
barren knolls on which they abound. The tops and 
the green branches have a peculiar odour and a 
bitter nauseous taste; and an infusion of them 
acts medicinally as an emetic, a diuretic, and a 
urgative, and in certain cases of dropsy, but is 
p ) ’ 
injurious in case of inflammation. The whole 
plant is cultivated on some poor soils in the 
south of France, for the manufacture of a kind 
of coarse thread from the fibres of its bark. It 
is cultivated in various parts of the continent, 
also, as a winter food for sheep, and has been re- 
commended for cultivation, on poor soils in Eng- 
land, as food for both sheep and horses. But it 
clearly affords far less nutritive matter than 
other kinds of forage which might be produced 
on the same soils; and it has the very serious 
disadvantage of acting powerfully on the urinary 
organs of all animals which eat it—The white 
flowering variety of the common broom, Cyti- 
sus scopartus albus, grows to the same height as 
the normal plant, and is very commonly cul- 
tivated in gardens and shrubberies for its beauty. 
But broom figures chiefly as a pernicious weed, 
and must be regarded as one of the most trou- | 
blesome plants which infest pasture lands. It 
strikes its roots deep into the soil, it continually 
sucks moisture from the earth, it makes no com- 
pensation by returning its leaves to act as man- 
ure, and it sheds its seeds, not only in great pro- 
fusion, but with habits of springing into growth 
at periods so distant as six or seven years. One 
method of destroying it, is to burn the land, to 
plough it deep, and to manure it richly with 
dung and ashes, or with calcareous matter and 
urine. Another method, when the land is de- 
signed for pasture, is to cut the broom close to 
the ground in May, when it is full of sap, and, 
in consequence, to arrest its circulation, to pre- 
vent its further formation of cambium, and to 
occasion the starvation and death of its roots. 
Another method is to pull up all young plants, 
by hand-weeding, when the ground is saturated 
with rain; yet this method is successful only 
when the texture of the soil and other circum- 
stances are decidedly favourable to the complete 
extraction of all the radicles. Another method 
is to fodder cattle upon broomy land; for their 
urine corrodes the roots of the plants, and their 
treading of the land diminishes its adaptation to 
both the spreading and the absorption of the 
roots. 
The thorny broom or prickly cytisus, Cytzsus 
spinosus, formerly Spartiwm spinosum, was intro- 
duced to Great Britain from the south of Hurope, 
toward the close of the 16th century. It is a_ 
small evergreen shrub; its branches are numer- 
j= 
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