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softly pubescent both sides. Flowers in robust woolly pubescent spikes upto 18in. long, numerous, stiffly reflexed against rachis, densely crowded. Bracts short, reflexed, ovate, membranous, with a long very acute point ; bractlets very sharply spinescent (very hard in fruit), with a broad membranous wing at base. Perianth-leaves about ⅛in., oblong-oval, acute, glabrous and shining, with a narrow white membranous margin. Stamens 5, staminodes, large, truncate, fimbriate. Fruit very small, oblong cylindrical, truncate, nearly smooth, brown, enclosed in a hard perianth.

A very common weed throughout the Tropics in India, Ceylon, in waste land and in grass. Trimen observes that the perianth containing the fruit disarticulates from the rachis above the bract carrying away with it the spinescent bractlets by which it becomes attached to other objects and is transported. Flowers greenish white.

Uses : — It possesses valuable medicinal properties as a pungent and laxative, and is considered useful in dropsy, piles, boils, eruptions of the skin, etc. The seeds and leaves are considered emetic, and are useful in hydrophobia and snake-bites. (T. N. Mukerji's Amsterdam Catalogue.) The dried plant is given to children for colic and also as an astringent in gonorrhœa. (Stewart's Punjab Plants.) Major Madden says that the flowering spikes are regarded as a protective against scorpions, the insects being paralysed through the presence of a twig. The ash yields a large quantity of potash, rendering it useful in the arts as well as in medicine. Mixed with orpiment this ash is used externally in the treatment of ulcers, and of warts on the penis and other parts of the body. (U. C. Dutt.) Sesamum oil and the ash (apamarga taila) are used in the treatment of disease of the ear, being poured into the meatus. Dr. Bidie says : " Various English practitioners agree as to its marked diuretic properties in the form of a decoction." Dr. Cornish reports favourably, having found it efficacious in the treatment of dropsy. Dr. Shortt reports on its use as an external applicant in the treatment of the bites of insects ; and Dr. Turner *calls attention to it as a remedy