CHAPTER XVIII 



POISONS 



Poisoned arrows — Fish poisons — Manchineel — Curare — A wonderful 

 story — Antiaris — Ordeals— The Obi poison — Oracles produced by- 

 poisons — Plants which make horses crazy and others that remove 

 their hair— Australian sheep and the Caustic Creeper— Swelled head 

 — Madness by the Darling Pea— Wild and tame animals, how they 

 know poisons— How do they tell one another ? — The Yew tree, when is 

 it, and when is it not poisonous ? 



EVEN to-day all embryo chemists and doctors are 

 required to " pass " in the recognition of the more 

 important medicinal plants. 

 But their knowledge is probably very superficial as com- 

 pared with that of a bushman in the Kalahari Desert of 

 South Africa. Every man, woman, and child in such a tribe 

 knows thoroughly every plant that grows in the neighbour- 

 hood. His diet is a varied one, for it includes maggots, 

 fish, frogs, snakes, white ants, and other horrible ingredients, 

 but he lives mainly on roots, bulbs, and herbs of sorts. 

 In times of famine he has had to obtain the most intimate 

 knowledge possible of many plants, that namely which is 

 obtained by eating them, and he has most carefully observed 

 the poisonous kinds. These latter have given him, too, a 

 very powerful weapon, for it is the poisoned arrows which 

 give him the chance of killing game, otherwise utterly 

 beyond his reach. He is on the fair road to becoming a 



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