appellation given to plants abounding with a milky juice, as the low thistle and the like. The name of lactiferous, or lacteal, is given to all those plants which abound with a thick coloured juice, without regarding whether it is white or not. Most lactiferous plants are poisonous, except those with compound flowers, which are generally of an innocent quality.

Of the poisonous lacteal plants the most remarkable are furnach, agaric, maple, burning thorny plant, callada, celandine, puccoon, prickly poppy, and the plants of the natural order contortae, as fowallow-wort, apocynum, cynanchum, and cerbera.

The bell-shaped flowers are partly noxious, as cardinal flower; partly innocent, as campanula.

Among the lacteal plants with compound flowers that are innocent in their quality, may be mentioned dandelion, pieris, hyoseris, wild lettuce, gum luccory, hawkweed, bastard hawkweed, hypochaeris, goat's beard, and most species of lettuce: we say most species, because the prickly species of that genus are said to be of a very virulent and poisonous nature; though Mr Lightfoot denies this, and affirms that they are a safe and gentle opiate, and that a syrup made from the leaves and stalks is much preferable to the common diacodium.

Lactuca, Lettuce, a genus of plants belonging to the syngenesia clas; and in the natural method ranking under the 49th order, Compositae. See Botany Index. And for the method of cultivating lettuce, see Gardening Index.

Lacunæ, in Anatomy, certain excretory canals in the genital parts of women.