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Rises to the height of a small tree, and is much branched towards the top; the young shoots are full of pith—the old ones empty; the leaves are pinnated, consisting of two or three pair, with an odd one at the end; flowers, sweet smelling, white, and produced on large, flat umbels, or clusters. The fruit is a round, succulent berry, of a blackish purple color, and contains three seeds.

History.—This tree grows in hedges and clumps, along the borders of meadows or flats, in every part of the United States; flowers in July, and the berries are ripe in September.

Medical Virtues.—An infusion, in wine, of the inner bark of the trunk, or the expressed juice of the berries, in a dose of an ounce, will purge moderately, and, taken in small doses,—say a teaspoonful every hour,—proves an efficacious diabetruent, capable of promoting and assisting all the fluid secretions. The following is a good medicine in families, for the cure of recent colds and coughs:—

Take of the juice of elderberries, strained, ten pounds, and add three pounds of loaf sugar; evaporate in a bake pan, over a slow fire, into the consistence of thick honey. A tablespoonful or two may be taken at bed time; and two teaspoonsful, for children, in coughs and costiveness, will prove effectual.

In erysipelatosed fever, a teacupful of the infusion of dry flowers, (made by pouring a quart of boiling water on a handful of the flowers,) may be taken every hour, and the parts wet with the following wash:—Boil four ounces of beech drops, in four quarts of rain water, down to one half; strain the decoction, and add to it a teaspoonful of sugar of lead. The face and arms may be wet with a linen rag, dipped in this lotion, four or five times a day, which never fails to cure, after necessary evacuations.

The above is also very good for children having the whooping cough, by taking a teaspoonful or two every hour.