a genus of palms, two of which are remarkable. A. oleracea is the cabbage palm of the West Indies and Guyana, which attains a height of from one to two hundred feet, with a very slender stem, of only a few inches in diameter. It is felled to obtain the young shoots, which are eaten as a vegetable, especially in pickles; the nuts are sweet and edible, and the trunk forms excellent water-pipes, when its soft interior decays. A. Catechu is the well-known Betel Palm of India; the astringent kernels are universally chewed in the East, when mixed with the leaf of a sort of pepper and quick lime. This pepper is the Piper Betel of botanists. The nuts are also used to afford an inferior sort of catechu, named Kassu, and Coury, now seldom imported into Europe.