adamsite

[Named by Shepard after a Mr. Adams.] A mineral, a variety, or perhaps a mere synonym of Muscovite (q.v.). It is a greenish-black mica, from the United States. ăd-ăn-sō-ni-a, s . [In Fr. Adansonie. Named after Adanson, a celebrated French traveller, who lived from 1749 to 1754 in Senegal, investigating its natural history.) A genus of plants belonging to the order Sterculiaceæ, or Sterculiads. The A. digit at a is the Baobab, Monkey-bread, African calabash, or Ethiopian sour-gourd tree. It has a fantastic look, its stem being of little height, but of great thickne ; one specimen was found thirty feet in diameter. The fruit is about ten inches long. Externally it is downy; within this down is a hard woody rind, which requires a saw to cut it acro ; and inside the rind is an eatable pulp, of slightly acid taste. The juice mixed with sugar is serviceable in putrid and pestilential fevers. The Africans mix the dried and powdered leaves with their food to pro mote perspiration, and Europe ans have found them useful in diarrhea and dysentery. The A dans on i a is properly a native of Africa, but it has been introduced, probably by the Mu ulmans, into India, where its large white flowers appear in May and June, to be in due time followed by fruit. *a-dânt, vt. [ADAUNT.]