BOMBAX, a genus of soft, spongy trees, of the natural order of Bombacææ. The most noted is B. Ceiba, the silk-cotton tree of South America, the trunk of which is often 100 feet high, and of enormous thickness, so that a canoe hollowed out of its spongy stem will carry at once fifteen or twenty hogsheads of sugar. B. pubescens of Brazil attains only a height of 20 or 30 feet. Its tough bark is manufactured into ropes.
END OF VOLUME FOURTH.