INTRODUCTION I 5 



The various authorities, from whose works I 

 have mainly compiled the present volume on British 

 and cultivated Garden poisonous plants, are as 

 follows : Mr. Alexander Wynter Blyth's Old and 

 Modern Poison Lore^ and his Poisons^ their Effects 

 and Detection (1895) ; M. Ch. Cornevin's work 

 entitled Des Plantes ve'n^neuses (this contains all 

 of our harmful English plants, as well as those 

 of the Continent) ; Dr. Tanner's Memoranda on 

 Poisons (1862) ; Dr. R. Hogg's Vegetable Kingdom 

 (1858) ; and Mr. Johnson's British Poisonous Plants 



(1856V 



It is not merely children who should be warned 

 against putting anything they find growing wild 

 into their mouths ; even adults are apt to make the 

 most stupid mistakes. Thus the garden Aconite, 

 which no one can mistake when in flower, having 

 long been in cultivation in cottage gardens, has 

 been the cause of the death of whole families ; 

 because, in the limited space at the disposal of the 



^ As it was inconvenient to give repeated references in 

 almost every paragraph, I here express my indebtedness, 

 generally, to the authors mentioned, from whom I have 

 borrowed freely, often quoting verbatim. 



The illustrations are mainly from Bentham's Handbook of 

 the British Flora : two, that of the Buttercup and Fool's 

 Parsley, from my own book, How to Study Wild Flowers 

 (R.T.S.), to which I would refer the reader for a more com- 

 plete knowledge of the structure of our principal wild flowers 

 than can be given in this Introduction. 



