of the four seasons or quarters of the year. See Season, &c.

Winter commences on the day when the sun's distance from the zenith of the place is greatest, and ends on the day when its distance is at a mean between the greatest and least.

Under the equator, the winter as well as other seasons return twice every year; but all other places have only one winter in the year; which in the northern hemisphere begins when the sun is in the tropic of Capricorn, and in the southern hemisphere when in the tropic of Cancer; so that all places in the same hemisphere have their winter at the same time.

Winter-Berry. See Physalis.

Wintera, in botany: A genus of plants of the clafs of polyandra, and order of pentagynia; and in the natural system arranged under the 12th order, Holaceae. The calyx is three-lobed; there are fix or twelve petals; there is no style; the fruit is a berry, which is club-shaped as well as the germen. There are two species; the aromatica and granadensis.

Wintera aromatica, is one of the largest forest-trees upon Terra del Fuego; it often rises to the height of 50 feet. Its outward bark is on the trunk grey and very little wrinkled, on the branches quite smooth and green. The branches do not spread horizontally, but are bent upwards, and form an elegant head of an oval shape. The leaves come out, without order, of an oval elliptic shape, quite entire, obtuse, flat, smooth, thinning, of a thick leathery substance, evergreen, on the upper side of a lively deep green colour, and of a pale bluish colour underneath, without any nerves, and their veins scarcely visible; they are somewhat narrower near the footstalks, and there their margins are bent downwards. In general, the leaves are from three to four inches long, and between one and two broad; they have very short footstalks, seldom half an inch long, which are smooth, concave on the upper side, and convex underneath. From the scars of the old footstalks the branches are often tuberculated.

The peduncles, or footstalks for the flowers, come out of the axilla foliorum, near the extremity of the branches; they are flat, of a pale colour, twice or three times shorter than the leaves; now and then they support only one flower, but are oftener near the top divided into three short branches, each with one flower. The bracteae are oblong, pointed, concave, entire, thick, whitish, and situated one at the base of each peduncle.

There is no calyx; but in its place the flower is surrounded with a spatheaceous gem, of a thick leathery substance, green, but reddish on the side which has faced the sun; before this gem bursts, it is of a round form, and its size is that of a small pea. It bursts commonly so, that one side is higher than the other, and the segments are pointed. The corolla

Vol. XVIII. Part II. that excellent purgative was so effectually covered, as to be scarcely distinguished by the nicest palate. Tincture of rhubarb also prepared with this bark instead of cardamoms seemed far less disagreeable.