CASUARI'NA, a genus of trees of the natural order anwntacra% and of the camiarinew, which is regarded by sonic as a distinct natural.order. The trees of this genus are almost exclusively Australian; one only, C. cqui4e.tifolia, being found in the South Sea islands, the Indian archipelago, the Malayan peninsula, and on the e. side of the bay of Bengal, as far n. as Arracan. Some of them are large trees, producing tim ber of excellent quality, hard and heavy, the beef-wood of the Australian colonists, so called from the resemblance in color to raw beef. a equisetifolia is called in Australia the SWAMP OAK. It is a lofty tree, the tog or alien of the Society islands, where it grows chiefly on the sides of hills, and where its wood was formerly used for clubs and other implements of war. It has been introduced into India, and is there much valued, as its wood bears a great strain, and is not readily injured by submersion in water. The hardness and durability of this wood led the earlier voyagers to the South Sea islands to designate it iron. wood. C. quadriralris is the Sm.: Om: of New South Wales. CASSO WARY TREE is a popular generic name of the casuarina'. Sonic of the species aro scrubby bushes. All of them have a very peculiar appearance, their branches being long, slender, wiry, drooping, greelf;jointed, With very small %mkt-like sheaths instead of leaves. They resemble arborescent cguisetacea. The fruit consists of hardened bracts, collected in a sin/bib/8, or cone, and inclosing small winged nuts. The flowers have neither calyx nor corolla; the stamens and pistils are in separate flowers, the male flowers with only one stamen, the female flowers with a one-celled ovary, the male flowers in spikes, the female flowers in dense heads. More than 20 species are known.
• CAS IIISTRY„called by Kant the dialectics of conscience, is that branch of theology and morals which professes to deal with very delicate moral questions—cants conscientia- and which supplies rules and principles of reasoning for resolving the same; drawn partly front natural reason and equity, and partly from the authority of Scripture, the canon law, councils, fathers, etc. C. has been, and still is, studied chiefly by Roman' Catholic theologians; but at one period Protestant divines also paid some attention to the perilous science. The rudiments of it, however, are to be sought for in antiquity.
Traces of it are found in the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece. This is not to be wondered at, for C. is not, in its essence, a device of the sehoohnen, although the latter elaborated it into a science, but a natural expression of the intellect and moral nature of man, when he is placed in circumstances of great perplexity. The sound and healthy reason of antiquity, however, could not enter into the morbid refinement, or rather the insidious corruption of morals found in certain Jewish and Christian writers. The Talmud (q.v.) contains an enormous accumulation of casuistical questions, while the sphere of Christian ethics in the middle ages often became a mere arena for unprofit able and pernicious disputations of this nature, as is seen in such works as the Summa JJaymundiana, Summa Astcsana, Summa Bartholina, which obtained their names from their respective compilers. At a later period, the Jesuits Molina, Escobar, Sanchez, Busenbaum, etc., became notorious for their abuse of ingenuity in the construction of moral puzzles, and for the flagrant immorality of their solutions. Some of them still "suffer the vengeance" of Pascal's immortal satire. It is nevertheless indubitable, that in the life of every man—now as formerly—casus conscienthe will at times arise, when the higher laws of morality come into collision with subordinate conventional ones. The dubiety as to what the path of duty is, what ought to be done, resulting from this collision, naturally and legitimately leads to many nice considerations. If these are carried on under the guidance of a pure conscience, no harm can ensue, but, on the contrary, much good. Such, however, is not the perverted C. of the Jesuits, 't the art of quibbling with God," as Le Peore, preceptor to Louis XIII., called it, in which a man seeks to justify, by subtle quirks, his immoral actions. _Mayer has published an account of all the writers on cases of conscience, ranging them under three heads— Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Romish.