186 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



bark, to protect them from rats and mice. This 

 preparation of sorrel was found by Linnaeus to pos- 

 sess a very agreeable acid taste, quite different from 

 the flavour of the fresh plant. The Laplanders, in 

 their paucity of esculent vegetables, gladly avail them- 

 selves of those plants which other nations arc in the 

 habit of rejecting as weeds, and in some cases indeed 

 avoid as poisonous. Linna?us informs us, on autho- 

 rity to which he gave credence, that the YELLOW 

 WOLF'S-BANE Jlconitum lycoctomtm is collected 

 in large quantities in some parts of Lapland, and 

 boiled for the use of the table. Noxious qualities are 

 ascribed to this plant, and to most of the species be- 

 longing to the same genus, which have, ever since 

 the time of Theophrastus, been reckoned deadlj 

 poisons both to man and beast. The deleterious 

 effects, however, may, as in the case of cassava, be 

 probably dissipated by the action of heat. 



Pilewort Ficaria ranunculoides. 



The young leaves of PILEWOUT *- Ranunculus fact- 



