3792. on vegetable poisons. 203 
conjecture, that by trying proper kinds of food along 
with that plant, the inhabitants might at length dis~ 
cover which of them counteracted its operation the 
best, so as to enable the inhabitants’ still to avail 
themselves of this early growing plant, as 2 valuable 
and [then] nourifhing food for their cattle > 
Linnzus likewise remarks, that horses and cattle 
which have been accustomed to feed in the open 
fields, are frequently hurt when carried into wood- 
lands ; while others which have been accustomed to 
go in the woods suffer no inconvenience from them. 
This he attributes to their eating noxious plants, 
which those animals who have been accustomed to 
feed there have learnt to avoid. May we not with 
‘equal reason suspect, that it may be owing to the 
strange animals not being accustomed to relifh the 
kinds of food that would prove antidotes to the 
plants that poison them, exactly in the same way 
that strangers carried from Europe into the tropical 
Tegions, though they relifh the succulent foods that 
there abound, cannot at first bear such a quantity of 
hot condiments as the natives of warm regions natu- 
rally employ as a corrector to the effects of their 
common food? In confirmation of this idea, I sup- 
pose it will be found, that animals which have been 
accustomed to run in woods, eat of a greater varie- 
ty of plants found there, than those which are first 
introduced from open fields. 
_ The uses that might be derived from a set of ju- 
dicious experiments, conducted on the plan of those 
ef Mr Wiborg, not to extirpate plants that are at 
‘present deemed noxious to animals, but to convert 
