of the oil in the skin or clothes-to have slight attacks. According to a writer who two years ago gave in the Spectator an account of his own case, the first symptom of an attack is almost invariably a redness and irritation of the eyelids, accompanied by shivering. In a few hours the eyelids are closed, the features unrecognisable, and the skin covered with little blisters. Then the lips swell enormously, the glands of the neck also. In four days the arms and hands are reached, each finger appearing as if terribly scalded and requiring separate bandaging. Then sometimes the lower limbs are involved. After ten days the attack passes off, leaving the patient in a pitiable state of weakness to grow a new skin and recover from other painful results of the poisoning. But no immunity is conferred by an attack; the unhappy victim (who is ignorant of the cause of his sufferings) may, and frequently does, get a new dose of the poison as soon as he has recovered, and the whole course of the illness has again to be passed through. If this account should fall into the hands of any one who is being unwittingly poisoned by the American poison-vine, and may therefore be saved by what I have written from further suffering, I shall be greatly pleased.

There are very few plants which have a power of diffusing poison around them; usually it is necessary to touch or to eat portions of a plant before it can exert any poisonous effect. The eighteenth-century story of the upas-tree of Java, which was fabled to fill a whole valley with its poisonous emanation, and to cause the death of animals and birds at a distance of fifteen miles, is now known to be a romantic invention. The tree in question is merely one having a poisonous juice which was extracted and used by the wilder races of Java as an arrow poison. It is stated that one of the stinging-nettles of tropical India has such virulent poison and such an

abundance of it in the hairs on its surface, that explorers have been injured by merely approaching it, the detached hairs probably floating in the air and getting into the eyes, nose, and throat of any one coming near it. The poison of the poisonous stings of both plants and of animals has been to some extent examined of late years. It is a curious fact that there are proportionately few plants which sting as compared with the number and variety of animals which do so. On the other hand, there are an enormous number of plants which are poisonous to man when eaten by him, but there are very few animals which are so.

It will be of interest to my readers to know that I received, in consequence of the publication of the foregoing account of the "Poison-vine" or "Poison-ivy," more than fifty letters and boxes containing leaves. At Kew Gardens nearly a hundred applications were made with a request for the identification of leaves. The proportion of cases in which leaves of true poison-ivy (Rhus toxicodendron) were sent to me seems to be the same as that which they observed at Kew-only two samples of the leaves sent to me were those of the true poison-ivy. Hence we may conclude that the plant has not been very largely introduced in this country, and probably there are not many hundred cases existing in England of the painful malady which it can, in certain people, produce. I have, however, received information of several instances of this poisoning from different parts of the country, which are either now under treatment or have been cured, and in some cases the poison-ivy has been discovered as the cause, owing to the description which I published. It is certainly true that the illness caused by this plant only attacks a small proportion of those who handle it, and it is possible that the plant is more virulent at some seasons and in some

soils than in others. In the United States, even in the neighbourhood of New York, it is a real danger, and is recognised as such, but as appears from a letter which I quote below, the reason of the dread which the poison-ivy" excites in the States depends on the fact that it is not there a mere garden plant, but grows wild in great abundance in the woodlands frequented by holiday-makers and lovers of natural forest and lakeside wilderness, The poisonous nature of the allied species of Rhus used for the manufacture of "lacquer" or varnish is recognised by the Japanese and others who prepare this product and have to handle the plant—they wear gloves to protect the hands.

As showing what kind of trouble the "poison-ivy' and " "poison-oak" (another kind of Rhus or Sumach) give in the United States, I will quote a letter I have received from an American lady well known in London society. She says: "I have known, suffered, and struggled against the poison-ivy in America from my earliest years, when my poor mother lay for days with blinded and swollen eyes, having gathered it inadvertently. The 'poison-ivy,' as we call it, is a curse to country life, outside the purely artificial and cultivated gardens, and even there it creeps in insidiously." She describes a beautiful farm property on Lake Champlain, on the Canadian border, where she and her family would spend many weeks in summer in order to enjoy the delights of complete seclusion in wild, unspoilt country: "The one and only drawback to the place was," she writes, "the inexhaustible quantity of poison-ivy. Our first duty had been to teach my two daughters and their governess how to distinguish and avoid contact with it. The one and only rule was that the poison-ivy has the clusters of three leaflets (the middle leaflet with a longer stalk, E.R.L.), whereas the woodbine (not the English wood

bine, which is a convolvulus, E.R.L.), or, as you call it, 'Virginian creeper,' has five leaflets in a cluster. Every path which we used frequently and necessarily, such as the path to the boat-house, and to the cove where the bathing-house stood, we kept cleared of the Rhus for a sufficient width, but in the woods eternal vigilance was the price of safety. To uproot and burn is the only way to destroy it, but, of course, that involves danger to the one who does the work, because contact with the spade used, and with the garments which touched the ivy, might communicate the poison. The farmer and the country folk about declared that the fumes from the burning plant could and did poison those who breathed them. We used to turn a flock of sheep into the most used parts. They prefer the poison-ivy to grass, and greedily eat down every leaf within reach in hedge or path. But that, of course, was a mere temporary safety, as the plant is most tenacious of life. I personally had a most grievous experience one summer. I can only suppose that my dress, though very short for wood and hill walking, brushed over the poisonous plant, and then, when I undressed, came into contact with my skin. Both legs became covered with the eruption, eventually developing pustules, and the agony of itching, burning, and smarting was indescribable. The first remedy applied is usually a frequent use of baths of some alkali, generally common soda. With me it was altogether inadequate, and the doctor carefully covered the affected parts with a thick layer of bismuth, and bandaged them, so as to exclude all air. But it took weeks to cure me.

A very serious result in many cases is that there is a recurrence of the itching for several years."

XII

POISONS AND STINGS OF PLANTS AND

ANIMALS

To give an account of poisonous plants would require

то

a whole volume. Among plants of every degree and kind are many which produce special chemical substances which are more or less poisonous, and yet often of the greatest value to man when used in appropriate doses, though injurious and even deadly if swallowed in large quantity. Plants are laboratories which build up in a thousand varieties wonderful chemical bodies, some crystalline, some oils, some volatile (as perfumes and aromatic substances), some brilliantly coloured (used as dyes), some pungent, some antiseptic, some of the greatest value as food, and some even digestive, similar to or identical with those formed in the stomach of an animal.

Man, the chemist, every year is learning how to produce in his own laboratories, from coal and wood refuse, many of these bodies, so as to become to an everincreasing extent independent of the somewhat capricious and costly services of the chemists supplied by naturethe plants. In a recent exhibition there was a case showing on one side the various essential oils used to make up a flask of eau-de-Cologne, and specimens of the plants, flowers, leaves, and fruits from which they are