FOOD AND FEEDING 203 



indulgence in photographic chemicals, the contents of 

 stray medicine bottles, and the best dried West India 

 chilies. But in an earlier period of progress, and especi- 

 ally in tropical countries (where the Darwinians have now 

 decided the human race made its first d&but upon this or 

 any other stage), things were very different indeed. Pun- 

 gent and poisonous plants and fruits abounded on every 

 side. We have all of us in our youth been taken in by 

 some too cruelly waggish companion, who insisted upon 

 making us eat the bright, glossy leaves of the common 

 English arum, which without look pretty and juicy enough, 

 but within are full of the concentrated essence of pungency 

 and profanity. Well, there are hundreds of such plants, 

 even in cold climates, to tempt the eyes and poison the 

 veins of unsuspecting cattle or childish humanity. There 

 is buttercup, so horribly acrid that cows carefully avoid it 

 in their closest cropped pastures ; and yet your cow is not 

 usually a too dainty animal. There is aconite, the deadly 

 poison with which Dr. Lamson removed his troublesome 

 relatives. There is baneberry, whose very name sufficiently 

 describes its dangerous nature. There are horse-radish, 

 and stinging rocket, and biting wall-pepper, and still 

 smarter water-pepper, and worm-wood, and nightshade, 

 and spurge, and hemlock, and half a dozen other equally 

 unpleasant weeds. All of these have acquired their pun- 

 gent and poisonous properties, just as nettles have acquired 

 their sting, and thistles their thorns, in order to prevent 

 animals from browsing upon them and destroying them. 

 And the animals in turn have acquired a very delicate 

 sense of pungency on purpose to warn them beforehand of 

 the existence of such dangerous and undesirable qualities 

 in the plants which they might otherwise be tempted in- 

 cautiously to swallow. 



In tropical woods, where our ' hairy quadrumanous 



