1 66 POISONOUS PLANTS 



having many times been saved by it. Then, when 

 you can reach a drugshop, have prepared a saturate 

 solution of sugar of lead in seventy -five parts alco- 

 hol (alcohol cuts oil) to twenty -five parts water. 

 Be sure that this prescription is marked poison 

 and ornamented with a red skull and cross-bones, 

 before you take a clean bit of cotton, sop your 

 afflicted spots with the solution and put the rest 

 away for future use. Sugar of lead is deadly when 

 taken internally, but as an unfailing remedy for the 

 horrible irritation of Ivy poison it is a clear but 

 exceptional case of two wrongs making a right. 



The double qualities of beauty and evil possessed 

 by this plant were truly if sentimentally summed 

 up in a poem written by a North countryman, 

 who once worked for us, his mind being more 

 ready to immortalize weeds in legends than his 

 fingers to eradicate them from the paths. Not 

 being familiar with the language of the Sagas, in 

 which the verses were given me, I asked for an 

 interpretation. The Poet willingly dropped his hoe, 

 clasped his hands, and, choking with the emotional 

 memory of his recent and first experience in poi- 

 soning by a gorgeous and deceitful vine that he 

 had plucked and brought home over his shoulder, he 

 began in a whisper, which rapidly arose to a shriek : 



