THORN APPLE 187 



quite clearly appear. It is also often in England called 

 the stramonium. Harte, for instance, a little-known poet, 

 in dwelling on the plants that grew around the door of 

 the Palace of Death, writes — 



Nor were the Nightshades wanting, nor the power 

 Of thorned Stramonium, nor the sickly flower 

 Of cloying Mandrakes, the deceitful root 

 Of the monk's fraudful cowl.' 



The thorn-apple has a many-branched, herbaceous 

 stem, and rises to a height of some two feet or so. The 

 plant is an annual. The leaves are large and angular, and 

 of a dark green colour, the veins on them being strongly 

 marked. They are very irregular in form, no two being 

 alike. In our illustration we only give the upper leaves of 

 a stem ; the lower leaves would be quite six inches long. 

 The whole plant when bruised has a nauseous smell. 



The flowers are tubular in form, or, rather, funnel- 

 shaped, as they expand widely at their mouths. They are 

 about three inches long, and pure white in colour, rising 

 from a long, tubular calyx, pale green in colour, and 

 acutely pentangular. The whole plant is very poisonous, 

 and so it is regarded with disfavour, but justice is justice 

 after all, and one must admit that the flowers are quaintly 

 elegant and attractive." 



The fruit is a large, erect, egg-shaped capsule, thickly 

 covered with blunt spines. It is at first green, but on the 



' This last line is a paraphrase for the monk's-hood, another poisonous 

 plant. " 'Tis not the cowl," the proverb tells us, " that makes the monk." 



' This dangerous narcotic plant clothes itself with such an elegant 

 indented foliage, and garnishes its branches with corollas of such graceful 

 and negligent a shape, and of so pure a white, that all suspicion of its 

 deleterious nature seems lulled to rest, whilst, like the Lamia; of old, its 

 charms only allure that its powers may destroy. — Phillips, Flora Historica. 



