1859.] BOTANICAL NOTES, NOTICES, AND QUERIES. 319 



taken in too great qxiantities. With this herb all the provision was in- 

 fected, and they that carried it, to prevent all suspicion of fraud, tasted of 

 it before, and invited the Danes to drink huge draughts of it." The con- 

 sequence was what the King anticipated. The Danes fell an easy prey to 

 the Scottish King. 



Buchanan's description of the above plant agrees well with that of 

 Atropa Belladonna, the Deadly Nightshade. Delta. 



Atropa Belladonna. 



It is plain enough that Buchanan's description of the above plant, and 

 his identifying it as the Sleepy NigJdshade, are both quite just and cor- 

 rect. His characters are evidently drawn up from the plant, or are copied 

 or abridged from some of the herbals which were in existence even in 

 the sixteenth century. 



The Solamim majus of Matthiolus is, according to Smith, our magtius 

 coryphcem on these points, the Atropa Belladonna, Linn., which the an- 

 cient herbalists described as possessed of the same properties as the 

 Solanmn mmniferum, Matth. Yet a very moderate portion of prudent 

 scepticism will show us that the whole account is exactly as vraisemhlable 

 as that of the poetic fact which gave rise to this question. The his- 

 torian does not state at what season this occurred, nor even the year, 

 but he states enough to throw grave doubts over the whole narration. 

 The gift was wine pressed out of the grape and strong malt liquor. 

 Grapes fit for pressing were at that period, it may be believed, as rare 

 in Scotland as the Deadly Nightshade is now rare in that country. If 

 he means wine pressed out of the grape, as most vsdne is, and which 

 was preserved in casks or bottles, as wine is at the present day, and 

 probably was tlien, it would have been just as easy to have procured a 

 narcotic draught whei^with to drug or poison the Avine as it was to 

 procure the wine itself. Only a few pages before the account of the 

 slaughter of the Danes at Perth, there is a history of the killing of 

 Malcolm, the son of DuflFus, by poison. — (See Buch. vol. i. 244. 

 Translation. London, 1733.) Theta. 



Geranium molle and G. pusillum. 

 (From Dr. Bromfield's ' Flora Vectensis.') 



G. pusillum, L. Small-flowered Crane's-bill. " Petals notched, anther- 

 bearmg stamens 5, leaves rounded or reniform palmate, with 5-7 deep 

 trifid lobes, capsules smooth, carinated, downy, with erect, appressed 

 hairs, seeds without dots." — Br. M. p. 84. E. B. t. 385. M. Ban. 

 xii. t. 1994 (bona). 



The present plant so very closely resembles the preceding {G. molle) as 

 to be easily overlooked for that species. The following characters will be 

 found to distinguish G. pusillum. Stems generally redder in colour, the 

 pubescence far shorter, finer, and more or less deflexed. Leaves more 

 deeply cleft. Flowers much smaller, except in var. y of G. molle, more 

 inclining to blue or purplish, their pedicels I think rather longer in pro- 

 portion to the peduncles, and more suddenly bent or at a more acute angle 



