POISONOUS PLANTS. 141 



milky juice like that in the Euphorbias, and in some 

 Composites such as Lettuce. This is well seen in 

 the Physianthus (or Arauja), a climber very common 

 in the Nice gardens. Gomphocarp has the same white 

 sap; a plant which I have sometimes found half 

 wild on the road to Monaco. To this order belongs 

 also the foul-smelling Carrion Plant (Stapelia) : I have 

 grown it in a sheltered corner. In the Mortola 

 gardens a dozen Cape and one Sicilian species are 

 grown in the open air. 



All these, though common enough, are garden 

 plants : but there is one, and only one, European wild 

 plant belonging to the Asclepiads, namely, the little 

 Vincetoxicum (Fig. 55), which disputes every inch of 

 waste ground on the hills with Box and Savory 

 (Satureia). Vincetoxicum abounds on the Mt. Chauve, 

 but you need not walk so far to find it, for it grows 

 as near the coast as the entrance of the Vallon des 

 Fleurs, that is, on the outskirts of the town. 



Many of these Asclepiads, if not exactly 

 poisonous, have something spiteful about them : they 

 ill-treat the insects which carry their pollen grains 

 for them. If you look into the flower, you see neither 

 stamen nor stigma, these are concealed, but there are 

 wedge-shaped slits : in these the foot of a butterfly 

 or the tongue of a bee gets caught. If he has strength 

 enough to pull his leg out again, well and good ; his 

 leg or his proboscis will merely be decorated with a 

 couple of little tags, something like the horns which 

 an Orchis places on the head of a bee. A butterfly 

 may have as many as a dozen of these tags glued to 

 his foot. But a weaker insect, an ant for instance, 

 will not be able to set himself free again if his leg is 



