Balaustia Pharm. Lond. & Edinb. Ba-laustines: large rose-like flowers, of a deep red colour, set in long bell-shaped tough cups. They are the produce of the wild or double-flowered pomegranate tree, (Granata malus Pharm. Edinb. Balaustia flore pleno majore C. B. Punica Granatum Linn.) a low prickly tree or shrub, with long narrow leaves, bearing a brown-ish acerb fruit about the size of an orange; a native of the southern parts of Europe, and cultivated in some of our gardens on account of the beauty and continuance of its flowers. The shops are usually supplied with the dried flowers from abroad; those of our own growth do not appear to be anywise inferiour to the foreign, but are not to be procured in sufficient quantity.

Balaustine flowers are mildly astringent and corroborant; of a moderately rough and some-what bitterish taste, and of little or no smell, or particular flavour. They give out their astringent matter, together with a pale red colour, both to water and rectified spirit * (a): the extracts, obtained by infpiffating the tinctures, in which the active parts of the flower are concentrated, are pretty strongly styptic. The spiritu-ous tincture is of a paler colour, and the extract in less quantity and proportionably stronger in taste, than the tincture and extract made with water. The spirituous extract, as well as the watery in-fusion, strikes an inky blackness with solution of chalybeate vitriol; a proof, that the astringent matter of the balauftine, after its separation from greatest part of the mucilaginous and other gros-ser substances of the flower, is still dissoluble in water.