266 VEGETABLE POISONS. 



wood is of so acrid and poisonous a nature, that the sawyers and 

 carpenters are obliged to work with gauze masks, to protect them 

 from its injurious effects. 



Historians have, however, exaggerated the accounts they have 

 given of the poisonous nature of this tree; for it has been said, that 

 the heads of the persons who sleep under its shade swell, and they 

 become blind ; that if the leaves touch but the naked skin, they 

 raise pustules, which cause deadly pains, unless helped with water 

 and salt, or fasting spittle. This, however, is not true j nor is any- 

 ill consequence to be feared from the leaves touching the naked 

 body, unless they are bruised, and the white milky juice they con- 

 tain is suffered to pervade the pores ; when it does, it raises blisters 

 like those of the confluent kind of the small-pox, causing acute pains; 

 but simple drops of rain water falling from those leaves upon the 

 skin will not have any ill effect, which Mr. Hughes affirms he has 

 experienced upon repeated trials. 



" This tree", observes the same writer " is of a very quick growth, 

 and is seldom or never found growing to any perfection but in a 

 loose and sandy soil, near the sea or other water. The trunk, when 

 full grown, is generally from two feet and a half to three feet in di- 

 ameter, branching, most commonly, from three to fifteen feet high 

 from the ground. The grain is smooth, and the wood durable. It 

 bears a fruit of the same make as the round sort of crab-apple, and 

 in its branches is of a beautiful colour and fragrant smell. The pulp of 

 these manchineel apples does not exceed one seventh of an inch in 

 depth, the inside being a hard stony kernel, in which are included the 

 seeds. Formerly no one dared to cut down these trees, without 

 first having made a large fire round them, in order to burn the 

 bark and dry up the juices that proceed from them in cutting : but 

 now naked negroes venture to cut them down, only using the pre- 

 caution of rubbing their whole bodies with lime-juice, which pre- 

 vents the sap from corroding or ulcerating their skins. Bruising 

 and mashing the tender leaves and boughs, and then throwing them 

 into fish-ponds, has often been practised by villains to destroy the 

 fish, which soon after grow stupid, float with their bellies upward 

 on the top of the water, and frequently die. Some sorts of fish 

 will eat these apples ; these are often found dead in the water, and 

 if taken while alive and eaten, often prove poisonous; even the 

 large white crab that burrows in the sand, is not, if near these trees 



