EBONY is an exceedingly hard and heavy kind of wood, susceptible of a very fine polish, and, on that account, used in mosaic and inlaid works, for toys, &c. It is of divers colours, most usually black, red, and green ; produced chiefly in the island of Madagascar and the Mauritius. Travellers give very different accounts of the tree that yields the black ebony ; some say that it is a sort of palm tree, others a cytisus, &c. M. Flacourt tells us, that it grows very high and big, its bark being black, and its leaves resem bling those of the myrtle, of a deep, dusky, green colour. Black ebony is much preferred to that of other colours. The best is a jet black, free from veins and rind, very massive, astringent, and of an acrid pungent taste. It yields an agreeable perfume when laid on burning coals ; when green, it readily takes fire from the abundance of its fat. Green ebony, besides Madagascar and the Mau ritius, likewise grows in the Antilles, es pecially in the isle of Tobago. The tree that yields it is very bushy ; its leaves are smooth, and of a fine green colour. Be neath, its bark is a white rind about two inches thick ; all under which, to•the ve ry heart, is a deep green, approaching towards a black, though sometimes streaked with yellow veins. Its use is
not confined to inlaid work, it is likewise good in dying, as yielding a fine green tincture.
Ebony is now less used than anciently, since the discovery of giving other hard woods a black colour. There is a sort of ebony coming from the West Indies, which is either black or white. This bears a flower resembling that of the English broom, seldom rises above eight een feet, and in the largest part of the stem does not exceed five inches diame ter. It is a fine timber wood, has a smooth even grain, which takes a good polish, and is very proper for bed-posts, , and a variety of turnery ware ; for which purposes the black is generally prefer red, the heart of which is the complexion of jet. There is likewise a bastard ebony, growing in the West India islands, called mountain ebony, which is of a dark brown See AIMERIMUM.