OUR POISONOUS PLANTS 61 



food, and it only possesses one species that is known 

 to be injurious to man. To the Crucifer family we 

 are again indebted for many of our most wholesome 

 garden vegetables, including seakale and watercress 

 and the various descendants of the wild sea-cabbage. 

 On the other hand, the order Ranunculacecz, or the 

 Buttercup family, must be classed among the danger- 

 ous tribes. Nearly all the members of this extensive 

 family, including the delicate wood anemone and the 

 traveller's joy, possess baneful properties. The juice 

 of even the beautiful yellow buttercup of our May 

 meadows is sufficiently acrid to blister the hand, and 

 the knowledge of this fact has frequently been made 

 use of by cunning beggars, who, as Gerarde tells us, 

 " do stampe the leaves, and lay it unto their legs and 

 arms, which causeth such filthy ulcers as we daily see 

 (among such wicked vagabonds) to move the people 

 the more to pittie." The following story, related by 

 the same authority, evidently refers to some species 

 of this order. After speaking of the " hot and hurtfull 

 qualities " residing in the juice of certain buttercups, 

 our old herbalist continues, in his quaintest manner: 

 "This calleth to my remembrance an history of a 

 certain Gentleman, dwelling in Lincolnshire, called 

 Mahewe, the true report hereof my very good friend 

 Mr. Nicholas Belson, sometime Fellow of King's 

 College in Cambridge, hath delivered unto me : Mr. 

 Mahewe, dwelling in Boston, a student in physick, 

 having occasion to ride through the fens of Lincoln- 

 shire, found a root that the hogs had turned up, which 

 seemed unto him very strange and unknown, for that 

 it was in the spring before the leaves were out ; this 

 he tasted, and it so inflamed his mouth, tongue, and 

 lips that it caused them to swell very extremely, so 



