384 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
vesicles, the cuticle was in part cracked and excoriated, and the 
entire appearance was that of a severe burn or scald, from which 
he had no expectation of recovering for, at least, a week or ten 
days to come. 
The account given by Kalm * of the effects of these poisonous 
Sumachs on himself and others, coincides with my own experience 
and the relation made to me by individuals who have themselves 
suffered from the venom. He, however, goes farther in his nar- 
rative of their mischievous powers than I am prepared to attest, 
as when he says that some dare not meddle with the tree (A. 
venenata) whilst its wood is fresh, nor can venture to touch a 
hand which has handled it, or even to expose themselves to the 
smoke of a fire made with its wood. Neither can I confirm what 
he asserts of himself and his servant, that the same person may 
be proof against the poison at one time and not another, and that 
even handling the seeds and wood in winter, when both these and 
the hands are cold, is not always a safe proceeding. These par- 
ticulars coming from such respectable testimony, must be sup- 
posed correct ; for my part, I can only say, that I have repeatedly 
tried all these species whenever an opportunity offered, the leaves, 
flowers, seeds, and wood, in summer and winter, when cool, and 
heated by exercise and the weather, and have uniformly failed 
to induce in myself the slightest symptoms of poisoning. It is to 
the Rhus radicans ox toxicodendron that Moore alludes in his 
beautiful ballad, The Lake of the Dismal Swamp :— 
“And when on earth he sunk to sleep, 
If slumber his eyelids knew, 
He lay where the deadly vine doth weep 
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep 
The flesh with blistering dew.” 
(To be continued.) 
* Travels into North America, vol. i. p. 77 to 82, and Id. p. 177 et seqq. (English 
Transl.) It is just a hundred years since Kalm, who was one of Linnæus’s most dis- 
tinguished travelling pupils visited America. In matters not affected by lapse of 
time, as his observations on Natural History and Botany, the face of the country 
and its climate, having gone over the same ground as he did, I can bear witness to 
the general accuracy of his statements, which renders his book still worthy of perusal, = 
even in its execrable English dress, by.a foreign translator, and in spite of some — Ji 
anilities and a vein of credulous simplicity which pervades the volumes. TS 
