ACONITUM NAPELLUS. 
this supposition, and the plant described by this ancient na- 
turalist has never been satisfactorily identified. 
This species, Aconitum Napellus, varies much in the color 
and size of its flowers, especially in a cultivated state, and is 
much prized as an ornament in the garden. It is a native of 
most parts of Europe, in mountain forests and plains, flowering 
iu May and June. The roots are napiform and fibrous. The 
stem is firm, elongated, erect, smooth, rising to the height of 
five or six feet, leafy and terminating in a long sparse spike of 
flowers, racemose, and the peduncles branched below. The 
lower leaves are few, alternate on long channelled petioles, pal- 
mated, or rather pedate, being divided to the base into three or 
five broad cuneiform divisions, deeply cleft and toothed. The 
petioles are shorter and the leaves less divided the nearer they 
are to the summit of the stem. The color of the whole is a deep 
green on the upper disk, and a pale green on the under; both 
sides are naked, smooth, and shining. The flowers are of a 
cerulean blue, on unifloral, erect, axillary, pubescent pedicels, 
They have no calyx ; but two small, erect, calycinal stipules, or 
rather subulate bracteole, are placed one on each side of the 
pedicle within a few nes. of the flower. The petals are five ; 
the uppermost helmet-shaped and more accuminate than in some 
others, covering two singular, peduncled nectaries; the lateral 
ones broad and roundish, the lower oblong, elliptical, and divari- 
cating. These four are slightly pubescent. The nectaries are 
cuculated, the spur of each being hooked and blunt. The lip— 
lanceolate, revolute and bifid. The filaments are spread, and — 
white at the base, where they closely cover the germens, but 
the upper part is filiform, purple, spreading, and bearing whitish — 
anthers. The germens are three, four, or five, with simple, 
reflected stigmas, and become capsules with many regular seeds. 
The plant is of easy culture; and for medical purposes, the 
leaves should be eather when ‘hs flowers appear. . 
CHEMICAL AND MEDICAL PROPERTIES AND USES. 
The whole of the plant is poisonous; but the deleterious 
qualities are lost in a considerable degree when it is dried, 
or long kept, and much of its acrimony is dissipated. The leaves” : is8 
when fresh have a faint narcotic odor, and a moderately bitter, 
acrid kesiay leaving a painful sensation of heat in the mouth 
ch mig ‘The activity | 
