1895-96-] Poisonous Plants. 153 



At the present day botanists have classified about 100,000 

 species of herbs, shrubs, and trees, and among this immense 

 number a proportion is more or less deleterious to animal life. 

 For it is a fact that every hedge-bank and pasture in our 

 islands is strewn with poisonous material in abundance. It is 

 safe to say that not a year passes during which some one does 

 not actually meet or narrowly escape death from mistaking a 

 poisonous plant for an innocuous one. Cases of sudden death 

 by poison are more conspicuous and striking in the animal 

 kingdom than among plants, the venom of serpents being a 

 case in point. But virulent poison is also present in the vege- 

 table kingdom. We all know the blister that the stinging hairs 

 of the nettle can raise on some unlucky hand. Venomous plants 

 belong to many different orders, and are found in various 

 parts of the world. Generally speaking, they are widely dis- 

 tributed, being found in all but the most arid or the most frigid 

 of climes. Certain plants possess a special poison apparatus 

 in hairs and bristles, whose points, entering the skin and then 

 breaking, are capable of doing serious bodily harm. The 

 glandular hairs of the common nettle (Urtica dioica), which 

 takes its specific name from the male and female flowers 

 growing on separate plants, and of the small nettle (II. urcns), 

 an annual species, and a troublesome weed on cultivated 

 ground, cause acute pain and irritation of the skin. Yet 

 the power of the British species is feeble compared with 

 that of some Indian forms, whose virulence is said even to 

 cause death. 



An example of the danger of poison-hairs is furnished by a 

 recently introduced plant, Primula obconica, a native of China. 

 A market-gardener who grows this plant in quantity, and works 

 the blooms into wreaths, was several times seized with ery- 

 sipelas, having in all six relapses. His illness was distinctly 

 traceable to the effects of this plant, so that persons susceptible 

 to erysipelas should avoid coming in contact with it. Another 

 case is recorded of a lady, who kept several plants in pots of 

 this primula, having suffered from an acute irritation of the 

 skin all over her hands. On taking away the plants, in a 

 short time the irritation ceased. As the lady rarely touched 

 the plants unless by accident in watering them, obviously to 

 some persons they must emit a poison in a way not easy to 



