botany, a genus of the decandria-monogynia clasps. The calyx consists of five unequal segments; the petals are five, and inserted into the calyx; and the capsule is angular, and has from three to five cells. There are three species, all natives of the Indies.

The wood is very ponderous, of a close compact texture; the outer part is of a yellow colour, the heart of a deep blackish green, or variegated with black, green, pale, and brown colours: the bark is thin, smooth, externally of a dark greyish hue: both have a lightly aromatic, bitterish, pungent taste; the bark is somewhat the weakest. The resin (which exudes from incisions made in the trunk of the tree) is brought to us in irregular masses, usually firable, of a dusty greenish, and sometimes of a reddish cast, with pieces of the wood among them: its taste is more acrid and pungent than that of the wood or bark.

Their general virtues are those of a warm, stimulating medicine: they strengthen the stomach and other viscera; and remarkably promote the urinary and cuticular discharge: hence in cutaneous defecations, and other disorders proceeding from obstructions of the excretory glands, and where sluggish serous humours abound, they are eminently useful: rheumatic and other pains have often been relieved by them. The resin is the most active of these drugs; and the efficacy of the others depends upon the quantity of this part contained in them: the resin is extracted from the wood in part by watery liquors, but much more perfectly by spiritous ones; the watery extract of this wood, kept in the shops, proves not only less in quantity, but considerably weaker than one made with spirit. This last extract is of the same quality with the native resin, and differs from that brought to us only in being purer. The gum, or extracts, are given from a few grains to a scruple or half a dram; which last dose proves for the most part considerably purgative.

Gualor, a city of the Hither India, and the capital of the province of Gualcor, situated forty miles south of Agra: E. long. 79°, and N. lat. 26°.