nd Pollux are commonly judged to portend a cessation of the storm, and a future calm; being rarely seen till the tempest is nigh spent. Helena alone portends ill, and witnesse the severest part of the storm yet behind. When the meteor sticks to the masts, yards, &c., they conclude, from the air's not having motion enough to dissipate this flame, that a profound calm is at hand; if it flutter about, it indicates a storm.

**CASTOREUM,** in the Materia Medica, castor; the inguinal glands of the beaver. The ancients had a notion that it was lodged in the testicles; and that the animal, when hard pressed, would bite them off, and leave them to its pursuers, as if conscious of what they wanted to destroy him for. The best sort of castor is what comes from Ruffia. So much is Rufian castor superior to the American, that two guineas per pound are paid for the former, and only 8s. 6d. for the latter. The Ruffian castor is in large hard round cods, which appear, when cut, full of a brittle, red, liver coloured substance, interperforated with membranes and fibres exquisitely interwoven. An inferior sort is brought from Dantzig, and is generally fat and moist. The American calior, which is the worst of all, is in longish thin cods. Ruffia castor has a strong disagreeable smell; and an acrid, bitterish, and nauseous taste. Water extracts the nauseous part, with little of the finer bitter; rectified spirit extracts this last without much of the nauseous; proof spirit both: water elevates the whole of its flavour in distillation; rectified spirit brings over nothing. Castor is looked upon as one of the capital nerve and antithyric medicines: some celebrated practitioners, nevertheless, have doubted its virtues; and Newmann and Stahl de- Castration, clare it insignificant. Experience, however, has shown that the virtues of castrators are considerable, though less than they have been generally supposed.