152 POISONOUS PLANTS 



Both species are dioecious ; the male plant having 

 its flowers on long peduncles. Each flower con- 

 sists of a calyx of three sepals with about nine 

 stamens (see left-hand figure). 



The female flower has a similar calyx, two 

 rudiments of stamens, represented by filaments 

 only, and a pistil of two coherent carpels with 

 spreading stigmas (see right-hand figure); the 

 pistil becomes a bilobed nut-like little fruit (see 

 figure above female flower). Mercury has no 

 " latex " or milky juice, but it contains a poisonous 

 principle. 



It exhales a disagreeable odour, so that animals 

 rarely eat it, but only when given to them mixed 

 with other herbage, when it has proved fatal to 

 sheep. In the case of man, misfortunes have only 

 occurred through misuse of the plant as a drug. As, 

 however, heSt destroys the injurious property, it is 

 innocuous in hay, and can be also eaten as a 

 boiled vegetable, as is done in some parts of 

 Germany. After boiling, it is also given to pigs 

 in parts of France. 



Yet it is a decidedly harmful plant ; the juice is 

 emetic and the seeds dangerously purgative ; even 

 fatal results have followed its use. 



The annual species has been called Wild Spinach 

 in some parts of the country, where they boil it as 

 a pot herb ; the botanist Ray records a case in 

 which a whole family of five persons suffered 



