THOEN APPLE. 209 



capsules are a beautiful object when skeletonised and bleached, 

 resembling a large upriglit Lily of the Valley. There are fire 

 stamens and one stigma. Children have been poisoned by 

 eating the seed in mistake for Filberts. I have gathered it 

 near Bipon, in Yorkshire, and Fanny has found it both at 

 Clevedon and in Cornwall. 



Sir J. E. Smith has admitted the Thorn Apple (Datura 

 stramonium, Plate XIIL, fig. 10), into the British flora. It is 

 a very handsome plant, with large, fragrant, white, trumpet- 

 shaped flowers, and deeply-lobed, bright green leaves. The 

 capsule is fully as beautiful as the flower, covered as it is with 

 strong bristles. When subjected to the process of skeleton- 

 ising, it presents a most beautiful object, exhibiting a network 

 of fibre, bristling all over with bleached thorns of various 

 lengths. It springs up wherever freshly-imported American 

 shrubs are planted, and sows itself from year to year. In a 

 garden in Wiltshire it has existed thus for a number of years, 

 and the poor people in the neighbouring village come to beg 

 the leaves, which they smoke in the style of a cigar as a cure 

 for asthma. This practice of inhaling the smoke of Stramo- 

 nium in a paroxysm of asthma is derived from the natives of 

 the East Indies, and I have medical authority for saying that 

 it is a safe means of relief. Notwithstanding this, the leaves 

 have a highly poisonous quality, and are dangerous when 

 swallowed. A friend of mine, an army surgeon, told me that, 

 when with his regiment in Canada, he was called to the wife 

 and children of a soldier, who were insensible, and apparently 

 dying from a stroke of the sun, as it was supposed. The 

 medicine administered acted as an emetic, and they began to 

 recover. On inquiry, it was found that they had been gather- 

 ing Lamb's-quarter (Chenopodium album), to cook for dinner, 

 and had eaten some leaves of the Thorn Apple at the same 

 time. A similar case, equally well authenticated, occurred in 

 "New Jersey during the revolutionary war, in which three 

 soldiers fell victims to the Thorn Apple poison ; one dying 



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