172 FLORA HOMOPATHICA. 
by the animals feeding (Linneus, Lachesis Lapponica, vol. i. 
pp- 136-40; trans. by Sir J. E. Smith). 
“This disease made no regular progress, nor was it com- 
municated by infection from one animal to another. The cows 
are driven altogether in the spring to feed in a meadow near 
the town. The symptoms differ in different cases; but all the 
cattle feeding indiscriminately are seized with swelling of the 
abdomen, attended with convulsions, and die, with horrid bel- 
lowing, in a few days. No person dares venture to flay the 
recent careases, it having been found by expefience that not 
only the hands but even the face, in consequence of the warm 
steam from the body, became inflamed and gangrenous, and 
that death finally ensued. . s * $ 
“J had scarcely landed from the boat in which I was taken 
to the meadow, than the Cicuta presented itself before me, 
and explained the cause of all this destruction. The slightest 
observation teaches us that brute animals distinguish by natural 
instinct such plants as are wholesome to them, from such as are 
poisonous. The cattle, therefore, do not eat this hemlock in 
summer or autumn; but when first turned out in the spring 
the herbage is short, and insufficient to satisfy them; probably, 
also, immersed under water, and scarcely perceptibly scented, 
they are unable to distinguish the wholesome from the perni- 
cious kinds. I remarked that everywhere the radical leaves 
only were cropped, and no others, which confirmed what 
I asserted. In a neighbouring meadow I saw this plant cut 
with the hay for winter food, so that it is no wonder if in that 
state some even of the more cautious cattle are destroyed by 
it” (Linn. Flor. Lapp., 2nd edit., p. 76). 
On Man.—Many fatal accidents have occurred from eating 
the root of the Cicuta Virosa in mistake for that of the common 
parsnip. The whole of the plant, however, is poisonous. The 
symptoms produced by the roots are vertigo, dimness of sight, 
headache, and difficult respiration; burning pain at the stomach, 
and vomiting, accompanied by heat and dryness of the throat, 
