CHAPTER IX. 



RANUNCULAC^, OE BUTTEECUP POISONING. 



June is the month in which fair Flora puts 

 forth all her charms, and although she clothes 

 our fields and hedgerows with beauty of colour 

 of every shade and form, yet her beauty may 

 become fatal to man and beast if they do not 

 understand the nature of the plants that are 

 given them for food. Such is the instinct of the 

 horse, that if left to roam in the field, and that 

 field is overflowing with noxious herbs, he will 

 refuse to eat them. Although the horse will eat 

 hemlock with impunity, yet the common butter- 

 cups, R.flammida^ R. bulbus, R. sceleratus^ R. acris, 

 and R. arvensis, are all of them injurious to the 

 hungry horse, and many cases occur of serious 

 illness which cannot be accounted for in any other 

 way than from eating grass containing abundance 

 of buttercup. It is a common practice with 

 people who have one or two horses and a lawn 

 for them to give their horses lawn-mowings to 

 eat ; and as most lawns are mown by the 

 machine, the sweet and good herbage becomes 

 inseparably mixed with that of the ranunculacce, 

 and is given to the horse when it is hungry, 

 when it will often eat it greedily, and in a short 

 time alarming symptoms are set up. Buttercup 

 poisoning is well known on the Continentj but 



