tragacanth's Usage Examples:

This property is usually obtained by mixing soft and hard soaps, or, more rarely, by adding gum tragacanth to a hard soap.

Among the valuable vegetable products forming articles of export are various gums and dyes, the most important being gum tragacanth, which exudes from the astragalus plant in the hilly region from Kurdistan in the north-west to Kermn in the south-east.

The majority of plant specimens are most suitably fastened on paper by a mixture of equal parts of gum tragacanth and gum arabic made into a thick paste with water.

Gum kuteera resembles in appearance gum tragacanth, for which the attempt has occasionally been made to substitute it.

For attaching it to the paper a strong mucilage of gum tragacanth, containing an eighth of its weight of spirit of wine, answers best.

It is insipid, crackles between the teeth, occurs in variable-sized pieces, is tough, of a yellowish-white colour, and opaque, and has properties similar to gum tragacanth.

Gum tragacanth is used in calico-printing as a thickener of colours and mordants; in medicine as a demulcent and vehicle for insoluble powders, and as an excipient in pills; and feltsetting and mending beetles and other insect specimens.

Manna and gum tragacanth are also collected.

The most important vegetable productions are - cereals, cotton, gum tragacanth, liquorice, olive oil, opium, rice, saffron, salep, tobacco and yellow berries.

Of dye-yielding shrubs and plants camwood and indigo may be mentioned; of those whence gum is obtained the copal, acacia and African tragacanth (Sterculia tragacantha).

The British pharmacopoeia contains the mucilages of acacia and tragacanth.

Synonyms:

gum,

Antonyms:

stay,