[ 42 ] 

 CHAP. IV. 



KUTRITIVE PLANTS. 

 SECTION I. 



Introductory Remarks, 



yj NDER this title we shall only give specimens of such as are mosl 

 rare, curious, or valuable ; this being the direct scope of the present 

 work, and the limit to which we have confined ourselves in every 

 department of it. There is some difficulty, however, in drawing 

 the line ; since, such is the peculiar construction of the digestive 

 organs of different kinds and classes of animals, that a plant or part 

 of a plant which is harmless and inactive to one description, proves 

 strongly medicinal to a second, a useful food to a third, and a rank 

 poison to a fourth : thus the tetrao cupido or pinnated grous, the 

 deer, and some species of the elk, draw au excellent nutriment from 

 the leaves of the kalmia latifolia, which are destructive to sheep, 

 black cattle, horses, and man. The bee greedily and with perfect 

 safety extracts its honey, but the comb hereby produced is poisonous 

 to those who eat of it. So the dhanesa or Indian buceros, feeds to 

 excess on the colubrina or nux vomica; the land- crab {cancer 

 raricola) on the berries of the hippomane or manchineel tree, and 

 goats on the conium maculatum or medicinal hemlock. In the 

 following sections, therefore, we shall take our examples from plants 

 employed as foods, cordials, or aromatics, by the different nations 

 and varieties of mankind : and our readers will readily allow us to 

 introduce it with the following elegant verses of Dr. Darwin. 



" Sylphs ! who round earth on purple pinions borne, 

 Attend the radiant chariot of the morn; 

 Lead the gay hours along the ethereal bight, 

 And on each dun meridian shower the light ; 

 Sjlphs ! who from realms of equatorial day 

 To climes, that shudder in the polar ray, 



