BOHAN, OR BOHAN-UPAS. 279 



Mr. Fontana likewise observes, that this poison does not act on 

 animals of cold blood. This poison hinders likewise the coagula- 

 tion of the blood from those killed by it; but if introduced into the 

 blood by the jugular vein, it produces death; and that it does not 

 act on the nerves, but only on the blood. 



[Phil, Trans. Pantolog. 



SECTION IX. 



Bohan, or Bohan-upas. 



Java appears to be possessed of various trees, the juices of 

 which are fatally poisonous. These vegetable poisons, in the lan- 

 guage of the country are called upases. In the first section of the 

 present chapter we have noticed the destructive power of two of 

 these upases the upas tiente and the upas antiar. The tree 

 named bohan, concerning which we have hitherto received no sys- 

 tematic description, produces a upas, or vegetable poison, of a still 

 more active nature. Its effects indeed have been very unnecessa- 

 rily exaggerated by many writers, but they are truly marvellous in 

 the plain unvarnished fact. 



The best and most satisfactory description we have hitherto re- 

 ceived of the bohan tree, and its extraordinary and fatal secretion, 

 has been communicated by M. Delille, a translation of whose paper 

 in English was read in June, 1810, before the fellows of the Royal 

 Society. M. Delille is a French physician, a member of the Na. 

 tional Institute of Egypt, and transmitted this paper from the 

 East Indies to the Royal Society, by means of an English lady. 

 The botanical account of this poisonous plant he received from one 

 of the French naturalists who accompanied Capt. Baudin, and who 

 resided some time in Java ; where he visited the interior of the 

 country, and with much difficulty succeeded in prevailing on the 

 natives to show him the different poison-plants, which they care- 

 fully conceal in order to use them during war. Hence the reason 

 of so many fables as have been repeated respecting the extraordi- 

 nary destructiveness and influence of the upas, which in the lan- 

 guage of the Javanese signifies vegetable poison, and is applied only 

 to the juice of the bohan tree, and another twisted-stemmed plant. 



T4 



