6 September 1748. 



their fwelling. I have known old people whfc 

 were more afraid of this tree than of a viper ; and 

 I was acquainted with a perfon who, merely by 

 the noxious exhalations of it, was fwelled to fuch 

 a degree, that he was as ftiff as a log of wood, 

 and was turned about in his bed. 



ON relating, in the winter of the year 1750, 

 the poifonous qualities of the fwamp fumach to 

 rny Ttingftr&m, he only laughed, and looked 

 upon the whole as a fable, in which opinion he 

 was confirmed by his having often handled the 

 tree the autumn before, cut many branches of 

 It, which he had carried for a good while in his 

 hand, in order to preferve its feeds, and put many 

 into the herbals, and all this, without feeling 

 the leaft inconvenience. He would therefore, 

 being a kind of philofopher in his own way, 

 take nothing for granted of which he had no fuf- 

 ficient proofs, efpecially as he had his own expe- 

 rience in the fummer of the year 1749, to fup- 

 port the contrary opinion. But in the next fum- 

 mer his fyftem of philofophy was overturned. 

 For his hands fwelled, and he felt a violent pain 

 and itching in his eyes, as foon as he touched tiic 

 tree, and this inconvenience not only attended 

 him when he meddled with this kind of fumach, 

 but even when he had any thing to do with the 

 Kfjus radicans, or that fpecies of fumach which 

 climbs along the trees, and is not by far fo poi- 

 ibnous as the former. By this adventure he wa$ 

 fo convinced of the power of the poifon tree, that 

 I could not eafily perfuade him to gather more 

 feeds of it for me. But he not only felt the 

 noxious effects of it in fummer, when he was 



Very 



