MAGNIF'ICAT ( Lat. Maga ifieat anima /a ea Dominum, My sou] cloth magnify the Lord). The song of thanksgiving originally uttered by the Blessed Virgin Mary (see Luke i. 46-55), and later incorporated into the service of vespers, in which it forms the principal part, correspond ing to the other 'evangelical canticle,' the Bene dictus, at lauds. At solemn vespers, during the singing of the Magnificat, the altar is ceased by the offieiant, vested in a cope. The English ver sion was incorporated in the Anglican prayer other species. Magnolia glance, white bay, beaverwood, swamp sassafras, a native of Penn sylvania, Virginia, and Carolina, is a tree or shrub of 15 to 20 feet in height, with beautiful fragrant white flowers. The yulan, or Chinese magnolia (Magnolia Yu/an), has been much cul tivated in China for more than twelve hundred years, for its profuse, beautiful, fragrant white flowers, which appear before the deciduous leaves.
lt is one of the finest of ornamental trees, and succeeds in most of the United States from New York southward. It is followed by Magnolia s'oulangiana, a horticultural variety, and Mag nolia oborata, a Japanese species. with purplish tinted flowers. Magnolia maerophylla and Mag nolia Frascri, American species. have about the same range as Jlagnolia grandillora, are trees 40 to 50 feet in height and are conspicuous for the size of their leaves, which in Magnolia maerophylla become from two to three feet long and a foot across. Their flowers are rose red, the petals three to six inches long. The genus Magnolia appears first in the Cretaceous rocks of Europe. and its fruits and leaves are abundant in the succeeding Tertiary deposits of North Amer ica, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and also from the Arctic regions far outside the limits of its present distribution.