ens were the staple of the town. The
grammar school is of interest as the place where John Tillotson
(1630-1694), archbishop of Canterbury, received early education. Colne
is a place of great antiquity, and many Roman coins have been found on
the site. As early as the 14th century it was the seat of a woollen
manufacture; but its principal manufactures now are cottons, printed
calicoes and muslin. In the neighbourhood are several limestone and
slate quarries. The town was incorporated in 1895, and the corporation
consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 5063 acres.

COLOCYNTH, COLOQUINTIDA or BITTER APPLE, _Citrullus Colocynthis_, a
plant of the natural order Cucurbitaceae. The flowers are unisexual; the
male blossoms have five stamens with sinuous anthers, the female have
reniform stigmas, and an ovary with three large fleshy placentas. The
fruit is round, and about the size of an orange; it has a thick
yellowish rind, and a light, spongy and very bitter pulp, which yields
the colocynth of druggists. The seeds, which number from 200 to 300, and
are disposed in vertical rows on the three parietal placentas of the
fruit, are flat and ovoid and dark-brown; they are used as food by some
of the tribes of the Sahara, and a coarse oil is expressed from them.
The pulp contains only about 3.5% of fixed oil, whilst the seeds
contains about 15%. The foliage resembles that of the cucumber, and the
root is perennial. The plant has a wide range, being found in Ceylon,
India, Persia, Arabia, Syria, North Africa, the Grecian Archipelago, the
Cape Verd Islands, and the south-east of Spain. The term _pakkuoth_,
translated "wild gourds" in 2 Kings iv. 39, is thought to refer to the
fruit of the colocynth; but, according to Dr Olaf Celsius (1670-1756), a
Swedish theologian and naturalist, it signifies a plant known as the
squirting cucumber, _Ecbalium Elaterium_.

The commercial colocynth consists of the peeled and dried fruits. In the
preparation of the drug, the seeds are always removed from the pulp. Its
active principle is an intensely bitter amorphous or crystalline
glucoside, colocynthin, C56H84O23, soluble in water, ether and
alcohol, and decomposable by acids into glucose and a resin,
colocynthein, C40H54O13. Colocynthein also occurs as such in
the drug, together with at least two other resins, citrullin and
colocynthiden. Colocynthin has been used as a hypodermic purgative--a
class of drugs practically non