62 BOTANICAL NOTES, NOTICES, AND QUERIES. [Febvuari/, 



case of the child Joseph Murgatroyd is not satisfactory nor decisive of this 

 point unsupported by the authority of all botanists who have noticed in 

 their works the properties of the fruit of this tree : because the child 

 had been ailing a fortnight before his death, and the surgeon had treated 

 him as a patient suffering from pleurisy and renal disorder. To infer that 

 he was poisoned by eating of this fruit, because the remains of some of 

 it, or of something like it, were found in the stomach, would be similar 

 to the inference that a patient, who died after breakfast or after any other 

 meal, was poisoned because some toasted bread, or the remains of food 

 recently taken, had been discovered in the stomach. We know, from 

 experience, that the skins of these berries are not readily dissolved in the 

 digestive juices. Besides, we can with confidence assert, on the crede- 

 experto principle, that they are quite harmless. To our knowledge they 

 have been eaten by hundreds, an naturel, and without the slightest ill 

 consequences. If these are suspicious, so are apples, pears, medlars, and 

 most fruits which are both pleasant to the taste and not hurtful to the 

 system. One may be hurt by over-eating. The stomach is too often 

 compelled to labour too much because the eaters have what is called " a 

 sweet tooth." Sometimes it obstinately refuses to be the drudge of the 

 palate, and its too heavy load must be moved by means of emetic tartar, 

 or ipecacuanha, or colocynth, or bitter aloes, or some other drastic. But 

 surfeiting is not poisoning. — Ed. 



Note to Me. Sim's Paper on the Aremonia and Potentilla. 



. . . "Respecting the Fotentilla, the locality of which I have just 

 visited, I am more than ever inclined to think it is no outcast from any 

 nursery. Its very position militates strongly against such a supposition.* 

 But while I doubt the probability, I admit the possibility. Though it is in 

 the vicinity of a quarry into which rubbish fi'om a nursery is occasionally 

 deposited, yet the majority of the plants are found on elevated ground to 

 the north and north-west of the quarry, where it is veiy unlikely that its 

 seeds could have been wafted by the wind." 



Edelweis. 



Edehvels — Gnaphalium Leontopodium — a flower met with only on some 

 of the highest mountains in certain parts of Tyi'ol and Bavaria. It is to 

 be found in Berchtesgaden, and on the Scharfreuter in the Hinter Eiss. 

 It is much valued for the snowy purity of its colour, as well as on account 

 of the difficulty of getting it. The veiy name, "Noble Pmity," {edel, 

 noble ; weiss, white,) has a charm about it. Strangely enough, it always 

 grows on a spot to be reached only with the utmost peril. You wiU see a 

 tuft of its beautifully white flowers overhanging a precipice, or waving on a 

 pei-pendicular wall of rock, to be approached but by a ledge, where perhaps 

 a chamois could hardly stand. But it is this very difficulty of acquisition 

 which gives the flower so peculiar a valu6, and impels many a youth to 

 brave the danger, that he may get a posy of Edehoeis for the hat or the 

 bosom of the girl he loves ; and often has such a one fallen over the rocks 

 just as he had reached it, and been found dead, in his hand the flower of 

 such fatal beauty, which he stiU held firmly grasped. — C. Boner. 



