52 



It is worthy of remark that the purple form has the common 

 name of Indian; the white, of American Thorn Apple; and 

 Tatorah is the Arabic name from which oiu' generic term of 

 Datura has been derived. 



The cogency of these remarks will be seen in the fact that 

 the D. Stramonium is a medicinal plant, having been much used 

 for asthma. Some few years since, a medical friend from India 

 introduced the D. Tatula to Mr. Savory as being more powerful 

 than the D. Stramonium,. Since then he has had it cultivated, 

 and it is now extensively employed in the shape of cigars and 

 cut tobacco, and smoked by the asthmatic; so much so, indeed, 

 that though I was only one of the growers, and sent up a few 

 truck loads to London, yet it is not sufficient, and I am now 

 growing as much as half an acre for medicinal use alone. 



If, then, we are to view the D. Stramonium as the form 

 adapted to colder atmospheres, and the D. Tatula as a warmer 

 or more Eastern variety, and to view the heightening of colour 

 as an evidence of a further elaboration of juices, it would follow 

 that in growing plants for medicine they should be placed in as 

 warm and open a situation as possible, in order to the full 

 perfecting of colour, which may be considered as equivalent to 

 tone or power. 



Some confirmation of this view may be derived from the culti- 

 vation of garden esculents; thus celery, a native, poisonous 

 plant, is quite innocuous when blanched; and lettuce, Lactuca 

 virosa, a dark plant in its native state, with an extremely bitter 

 and narcotic sap, in cultivation is sweet and wholesome in 

 proportion to its negation of colour. 



Again, the subject assumes importance when we consider that 

 varieties should be externally so different, and also so different 

 in power. No one seeing the two forms as I have grown them 

 side by side, for the first time, but would conclude them to be 

 specifically distinct. This view, however, on seeing the two 

 colours in the States, would, as it is by American botanists, be 

 modified. Still, I feel sure that the experimenter from these two 

 wild strains would surely get our two cultivated forms very 

 quickly; but, on the other hand, if we start with one form with 



