STRYCHNOS, a genus of the family Loganiacete, represented by trees, shrubs or vines which climb by stiff hooked tendrils, and are mostly tropical. 'The leaves are opposite, thin or coriaceous, and prominently three to five nerved. The flowers are small and whitish, col lected in dense axillary or terminal cymes, and are salver-shaped, with five valvate lobes. The ovary is usually two-celled and develops into an indehiscent, globose berry with a hard rind and pulpy interior enclosing flit seeds. This pulp is sometimes innocuous, and is eaten by birds and men, but the seeds are generally vio lently poisonous. Those of the Indian Strych nos potatorum, when rubbed in a vessel of water, send all the impurities to the bottom, whence the name of clearing-nut tree. Its pulp is edible. While many of the species of Strychnos contain the poisonous alkaloid called strychnine, which is used in small quantities as a valuable medicine, most strychnine of com merce is obtained from the button-like, satiny seeds of S. nux-vomica, or nux-vomica tree (q.v.), or from those of S. ignatii, the Saint Ignatius bean. Strychnine is alsolhe sole active principle in S. tieute, from Java, being extracted from the bark by boiling, and employed by the Javanese for poisoning their arrows. S. toxifera,
a woody climber often three inches' thick, with hooked tendrils, and covered with dark-brown hairs, is found in South America, and, with other species, is supposed to be the source of the arrow poison called woorali or curare. This substance is black-brown, like an extract, or firmer, brittle and friable; it is used somewhat in medicine as a nervous sedative, and in physi ological experiments. The South American Indians put it on arrows, chiefly on those shot from blow-guns, and use it for hunting, since the game is wholesome after being poisoned. Curare acts by paralyzing the terminals of the motor nerves, and causes death instantly when mixed with the blood, by paralyzing the muscles of the chest, and so suffocating the victim. The bark of S. nux-vomica was at one time introduced as a substitute for Angostura bark, with such deadly effect that the use of the latter was discontinued for a while. In Brazil, how ever, the cortex of S. pseudo-quina has been used as a febrifuge. S. colubrina furnishes the snakewood (q.v.).