ty92,  ——«- en _vegetable poisons. 208 
to eat of it thus at all. He was therefore obliged to 
abandon the experiment in this form. He then cut 
eight ounces of the leaves, and mixed them with 
twenty ounces of oats. The mixture was then eaten 
greedily, and the horse continued as well afterwards 
as ever: 
Our cautious experimenter, not yet satisfied, sus- 
pected, that as this horse was thin and emaciated, 
the irritability of the animal fibres might thus be di- 
minifhed, and that po/sibly somewhat of the effect 
might be attributed to that cause. He therefore re- 
peated the same experiment with another horse in 
good order and high health. The mixture was eat- 
en with the same relifh as if the oats had been pure, 
and the horse never discovered the smallest symp- 
toms of uneasinefs, but continued equally lively and 
healthy as before. 
From these experiments he concludes, that other 
kinds of food, taken along with plants which ate by 
themselves destructive to animal life, may totally 
seounteract these noxious qualities, so 4s to render © 
the same substances nutritious, which would other- 
‘wise have been poisonous ; and that by degrees the 
constitution of an animal may thus beso much ha- 
bituated to it, as, with very little addition, to find 
an abundant nourifhment from vegetables, which, 
without these precautions, would prove not only 
uselefs but noxious. 
We regret that these experiments were not puthed 
farther ; but the difficulty of procuring animals for 
trying such dangerous experiments, is a very suffici- 
ent reason for their being’so rarely rget with. Tue 
YOL, xii. cc BE ao 
