Dli WRIGHTS HERBARIA. 295 



tropics is thin and dissolved. From many years 1 residence in 

 the West Indies, I can aver, that buff'y blood is just as fre- 

 quent here as in any other climate whatsoever ; and requires 

 bleeding freely and repeatedly, to conquer the viscidity. 



124. Cassia Cham/ecrista, L. — Bastard Sensitive Plant. 



The larger bastard sensitive plant grows in low moist 

 grounds, and in low, level, cane-piece intervals, rising to two 

 feet. The stem is herbaceous, and without prickles; the 

 leaves like those of the tamarinds, contract on being touch- 

 ed ; the flowers arc yellow, and irregularly pentapetalous ; 

 the cods arc brown, flat, and contain three or four veniform 

 black seeds. 



Dr Isaiah Burgess, who practised many years in the 

 West Indies, discovered this plant to be a powerful antidote 

 against vegetable and fish poisons. 



It will hardly be credited, nor do I affirm it for an entirely 

 established fact, that every part of this plant above ground 

 is poisonous, and that all below the earth is a powerful anti- 

 dote against all vegetable and fish poisons, as well as against 

 the poison of the leaves and stems of the same plant. I have 

 had, however, frequent opportunities of experiencing its power- 

 ful effects in cases where vegetable poison had been given. 



The symptoms of vegetable poison, arc a loss of appetite 

 and colour, weariness, universal pains, soreness in the breast, 

 difficulty of breathing, burning at the pit of the stomach, 

 voiding of blood up and down and vomiting of green pora- 

 cious bile : followed sometimes by a sudden, but often by a 

 languishing, death. Some of our dexterous Africans are said 

 to dose out their baneful secrets, so as to poison in a few 

 days, months, or years ; and this they practise not on their 

 owners only, but on each other, of which too many melancholy 

 instances have happened of late years. Whenever I suspect 

 poison, I prepare a decoction of a handful of the washed roots 



