162 PLANTS TO BE AVOIDED 



stratagem to effect the violence. Even if it goes to 

 sleep in its lair, its victims do not escape, for the fish- 

 ing-rod is very sensitive, being covered with skin and 

 nerves, communicating a ' bite ' instantaneously to the 

 centre of sensation. 



Montagu says that, so healthy and vigorous is the 

 appetite of the angler-fish that, when taken in a net, 

 it sets to work upon its fellow prisoners, especially 

 flounders, which the fishermen afterwards recover alive 

 from its stomach. ' It is not,' he adds, ' so much 

 sought after for its own flesh, as for the fish generally 

 to be found in the stomach.' A common size of the 

 angler-fish is about three feet in length ; but a much 

 larger one was found this year [1908] stranded on 

 Heston Island, in the Solway. It measured fifty-three 

 inches from snout to tail-fin and weighed just under 

 sixty pounds. 



XXXIX 



Attention has been drawn lately in gardening jour- 

 piants to na l s to tne danger arising from planting the 

 be avoided American poison ivy (Rhus toxicodendron) 

 as an ornamental shrub. It is, indeed, a most virulent 

 poison, its mere presence in a room causing serious 

 discomfort to some persons, and the handling or 

 cutting of it being followed by very painful conse- 

 quences to others. The danger is the more insidious 

 because of the plant's general resemblance to the 

 Virginian creeper group; indeed it is, or used to be, 

 often sent out by nurserymen under the innocuous 



