JALALABAD, or JELLALABAD, a town and province of Afghanistan. The town lies at a height of 1950 ft. in a plain on the south side of the Kabul river, 96 m. from Kabul and 76 from Peshawar. Estimated pop., 4000. Between it and Peshawar intervenes the Khyber Pass, and between it and Kabul the passes of Jagdalak, Khurd Kabul, &c. The site was chosen by the emperor Baber, and he laid out some gardens here; but the town itself was built by his grandson Akbar in A.D. 1560. It resembles the city of Kabul on a smaller scale, and has one central bazaar, the streets generally being very narrow. The most notable episode in the history of the place is the famous defence by Sir Robert Sale during the first Afghan war, when he held the town from November 1841 to April 1842. On its evacuation in 1842 General Pollock destroyed the defences, but they were rebuilt in 1878. The town is now fortified, surrounded by a high wall with bastions and loopholes. The province of Jalalabad is about 80 m. in length by 35 in width, and includes the large district of Laghman north of the Kabul river, as well as that on the south called Ningrahar. The climate of Jalalabad is similar to that of Peshawar. As a strategical centre Jalalabad is one of the most important positions in Afghanistan, for it dominates the entrances to the Laghman and the Kunar valleys; commanding routes to Chitral or India north of the Khyber, as well as the Kabul-Peshawar road. JALAP, a cathartic drug consisting of the tuberous roots of _Ipomaea Purga_, a convolvulaceous plant growing on the eastern declivities of the Mexican Andes at an elevation of 5000 to 8000 ft. above the level of the sea, more especially about the neighbourhood of Chiconquiaco, and near San Salvador on the eastern slope of the Cofre de Perote. Jalap has been known in Europe since the beginning of the 17th century, and derives its name from the city of Jalapa in Mexico, near which it grows, but its botanical source was not accurately determined until 1829, when Dr. J. R. Coxe of Philadelphia published a description and coloured figure taken from living plants sent him two years previously from Mexico. The jalap plant has slender herbaceous twining stems, with alternately placed heart-shaped pointed leaves and salver-shaped deep purplish-pink flowers. The underground stems are slender and creeping; their vertical roots enlarge and form turnip-shaped tubers. The roots are dug up in Mexico throughout the year, and are suspended to dry in a net over the hearth of the Indians' huts, and hence acquire a smoky odour. The large tubers are often gashed to cause them to dry more quickly. In their form they vary from spindle-shaped to ovoid or globular, and in size from a pigeon's egg to a man's fist. Externally they are brown and marked with small transverse paler scars, and internally they present a dirty white resinous or starchy fracture. The ordinary drug is distinguished in commerce as Vera Cruz jalap, from the