122 SAGACITY AND MORALITY 01 PLANTS. 



such as oxalic acid, tannin, etc. Singularly enough 

 these objectionable substances are found most abun- 

 dant in adult plants, so that they must have reference 

 to flowering and seeding. Moreover, they also indicate 

 that such poisonous defences have been acquired. 

 Cattle often partake of objectionable yottng plants 

 when they will not eat them, even if pressed by 

 hunger, in the adult or matured state. 



Plants growing on or near the ground frequently 

 employ some kind of acrid poison by way of protec- 

 tion, like that secreted in the leaves of the " Lords 

 and Ladies," for instance. The acridity frequently 

 found in the leaves and stems of soft herbaceous 

 plants is perhaps the commonest form of their de- 

 fences. It is present in varying degrees up to a 

 virulent poison in the RammadacecB. One British 

 species, the Celery -leaved Buttercup {^Ranunculus 

 sceleratus), is so intensely acrid that half an ounce 

 of its juice will kill a dog ; and Professor Oliver 

 mentions that the root of an Indian species of this 

 order, Anemone ferox, affords one of the Bikh 

 poisons used in the Himalaya to poison arrows for 

 tiger-shooting. Some of the most virulent poisons 

 employed in medicine are extracted from this order, 

 which, all over the world, has somehow managed to 

 take the lead in this respect among herbaceous 

 plants. Not a few species show by their common 

 names the uses to which they have been put, as the 

 Wolf's-bane {AconiUnii). How effectual a protection 



