80 PASTORAL AND AGRICULTURAL BOTANY 



open eyes, dilated pupils, death-like pallor, retching and vomiting, violent 

 purgation, frequent stools, copious and in some cases bloody, irregular 

 pulse, whole body cold and rigid, succeeded by heat and perspiration. 

 Country people in England have used the fruits of this plant as a purge 

 and as a pickle, but their poisonous character renders them dangerous. 

 Cows that have eaten of the spurges give a reddish or sharp-tasting milk 

 and the milk of affected goats caused diarrhoea in human beings. 



Castor Oil Plant (Ricinus communis). The palma christi is an annual 

 plant in temperate regions, but in the tropics it becomes a small, perennial 

 tree. Its leaves are large, broad, palmately lobed and veined. Its 

 flowers are borne in separate clusters, as pistillate and staminate on the 

 same plant. The fruit is covered with soft spines and the seeds contained 

 therein are provided with a terminal spongy mass of tissue, the carunculus. 

 The seeds are albuminous with an oily reserve food. The oil expressed 

 from the seeds is the medicinal castor oil with strongly purgative proper- 

 ties. The seeds, as a whole, are poisonous ,and were used in Europe by 

 farmers to poison recalcitrant sheep, that developed the habit of jumping 

 fences into strange pasture fields. Pigs and poultry have been poisoned 

 by eating the seeds. The press cake was the cause of the death of 80 

 sheep, as reported by M. Audibert near Beaucaire, France. 



Poisonous Principles. Ricin is the toxic body similar to bacterial 

 toxins. Animals can be immunized by the use of an antitoxic body anti- 

 ricin. Ricinin (CgHgOo^) is an alkaloid obtained from the seeds. Its 

 toxic action is doubtful. Symptoms of poisoning appear some days after 

 ingestion of the beans or press-cake. Purging is marked. In the case of 

 horses, ^ey lose their appetite, shiver, have cold extremities, dejection, 

 abdominal pain, constipation with a temperature of io3F. and a pulse of 

 70. Death follows in about three days. 



Poison Ivy. (Rhus radicans, Rhus Toxicodendron). The poison ivy 

 is a vine which climbs up the trunks of trees by short aerial roots, or 

 grows in a spreading prostrate manner over the ground, over stone piles, 

 or the dunes along the seashore. An upright form of the plant is occa- 

 sionally seen. Its leaves are trifoliately compound, lustrous green turn- 

 ing to a red in autumn. Its flowers are greenish-yellow and its drupace- 

 ous fruits white. The plant is poisonous at all seasons of the year as the 

 writer has been poisoned in midwinter by forcing his way through brush 

 over which this ivy had grown. It is especially virulent after a rain on a 

 hot summer's day, when one is actively perspiring. Contact with the 

 plant seems to^be necessary to induce poisoning. There is a current belief 



