FiTCHETT. — Physiological Action of Tutin. 287 



A. HISTORICAL. 

 1. General and Descriptive. 



On the 20th May, 1773, at Queen Charlotte Sound, Captain Cook sent 

 on shore a ewe and a ram which he had brought from the Cape of Good 

 Hope with a view to stocking New Zealand with sheep. On the 22nd he 

 " received the unpleasant intelligence that the ewe and ram which with 

 so much care and trouble he had brought to this place were both of them 

 found dead. It was supposed that they had eaten some poisonous plant, 

 and by this accident all the Captain's hopes of stocking New Zealand with 

 a breed of sheep were instantly blasted " (1). He tried again, however, 

 wnih. goats, but with Uttle better result. 



Cook's supposition that the flora of New Zealand includes a plant 

 possessing highly toxic properties was well founded. That his ewe and 

 ram shared the fate that has since been meted out to many thousands of 

 sheep and cattle, and to not a few human beings, is in the highest degree 

 probable. 



The poisonous plant whose existence was suspected in 1773 has long 

 since been identified as a Coriaria, and is known throughout the Dominion 

 by its Maori name tutu, or, as Europeans often pronounce it, " toot." 



The difficulties met with by Cook in his attempts to stock the country 

 were again encountered by the early settlers. Large numbers of their 

 flocks and herds were destroyed by eating the leaves and succulent young 

 shoots of this attractive shrub, for it abounded everywhere, and grew most 

 profusely where the soil, by its richness, offered an inducement to the pioneer 

 to settle. 



Animals hungry and in poor condition were particularly prone to succumb 

 to the effects of the poison ; and, as these conditions prevailed with most 

 of the beasts landed from the ships, it will be understood how great an 

 impediment to stocking the country this noxious plant proved. The very 

 first issue of the Lyttelton Times (2) notices the death of three out of five 

 eows that had just been landed — one fell over a cliff, and two others were 

 poisoned by eating tutu. The newspaper, in warning settlers of the danger- 

 ous properties of the plant, says, " It is impossible to take too much 

 care in landing cattle at this place. To beasts just out of a ship the tutu, 

 of which there is abundance here, is certainly fatal." 



The damage done to stock was enormous, as may be gathered from the 

 following quotation from Dr. Lauder Lindsay's article " On the Toot Plant 

 and Poison of New Zealand " (3) : " In the course of a tour through the 

 New Zealand provinces during the latter part of 1861 and earlier months 

 of 1862 I was everywhere struck by the abundant evidences of devastation 

 produced among flocks and herds from their feeding on the ' toot ' plant, 

 one of the most widely distributed and familiar indigenous shrubs of the 

 country. One settler friend told me of his having lost by ' tooting ' 

 two hundred and fifty sheep ; another, eighty to a hundred sheep of a flock 

 of four hundred ; a third, seven of sixteen bullocks ; a fourth, six of twenty- 

 four cattle ; a fifth, twenty-four cattle ; a sixth, six of eight cattle — each 

 of these instances in a single night. Another flock-master lost four hundred 

 sheep out of a flock of two thousand, twenty-five being frequently dead of 

 a night. In other words, he seemed a fortunate farmer or runholder who 

 had not lost more than 25 per cent., or one-fourth, of his stock from toot 

 poisoning ; while in some instances the losses were so high as 75 per cent., 

 or three-fourths. Some of the colonists had suffered so severely from losses 

 of bullocks by toot poisoning that they were at the trouble and expense 



