Botanical Description.--A tree, 4-6 meters high, with drooping limbs; leaves long, very narrow, abruptly pinnate; many caducous leaflets, linear, elliptical. Flowers large, white, fragrant, in axillary racemes. Calyx bell-shaped with two indistinct lips. Corolla papilionaceous, white. Standard oval, a slight notch at the apex. Wings almost as large as the keel which is strongly arched. Stamens 10, diadelphous. Anthers uniform. Style and stamens equally long. Stigma a small head. Pod 1-2° long, linear, 4-sided, containing many oval seeds, separated by filamentous partitions. Habitat.--Grows in all sections of Luzon and Panay. _Abrus precatorius_, L. Nom. Vulg.--_Saga_, _Sagamamin_, _Bangati_, Tag.; _Bangati Gikosgikos_, Vis.; _Kanaasaga_, Pam.; _Bugayon_, Iloc.; _Jequiriti_, _Prayerbeads_, Eng. Uses.--The part of the plant most important in therapeutics is the seed, the size of a small pea, bright red with a black spot, hard and shining. The Filipino children use them to make rosaries and other decorations. In the distant past the Filipinos used these seeds to weigh gold, a practice followed even to-day by the Hindoos. The famous Susrutas, author of the "Ayur Veda," recommends them internally for nervous diseases; modern therapeutics, however, limits their use to one disease, though that is frequent and stubborn enough, namely chronic granular conjunctivitis. Some physicians state that these seeds are poisonous and others the contrary, but the fact that they are used as food among the poor classes of Egypt, demonstrates their harmlessness in the digestive tract at least; when introduced into the circulation they undoubtedly exercise a toxic effect. We have already mentioned that their use is limited nowadays to the therapeutics of the eye; the decoction of the seeds known in Europe under the name of "Jaqueriti"--so named in Brazil--produces a purulent inflammation of the healthy conjunctiva and it is precisely this counter-irritant effect which makes it useful in chronic granular conjunctivitis, the persistence of which has defied the most heroic measures of therapeutics. The French oculist, Dr. de Wecker, was the first to employ jequirity for this purpose, in the form of a 24 hours' maceration of the seeds, 10 grams to 500 grams of water. It is necessary to use a product recently prepared and with this several applications a day are made. It is now known that the inflammation of the healthy conjunctiva is not caused by germ-life contained in the solution but by an inorganic ferment discovered by Bruylans and Venneman and named jequiritin; they state that it is produced during the germination of the seeds or of the cells in the powdered seeds. Warden and Waddell, of Calcutta, have isolated an essential oil, an acid named "ábric" and an amorphous substance called abrin, obtained by precipitation with alcohol from a watery infusion of the pulverized seeds. Its action is identical with that of "jequiritin."