172 NIGHT8HADE. 



the spot where I observed it, there chanced to be a little boy ; 

 I asked him if he knew the plant ? He answered, ' Yes ; it was 

 naughty man's cherries.' I then inquired of him if he had 

 eaten any of the berries ? He said ' he had, with several other 

 children from an adjoining poor-house, and that it made them 

 all very sick, but that none of them had died.' " 



The Deadly Nightshade flowers in June and July, and the 

 berries ripen in September. 



The name of the genus has been very appositely bestowed in 

 honour of Atropos, one of the Fates, whose office it is to cut 

 the thread of human life. The specific name is borrowed from 

 its Italian appellation, Belladonna, signifying beautiful lady, 

 from the use made of it by the ladies as a cosmetic. The old 

 names lethale, maniacum and furiosum allude to the madness and 

 delirium occasioned by the plant when it is taken in an over dose. 

 Dioscorides calls it a-c^vyjioc, pavixof, and some writers consider 

 it the Mandragora of Theophrastus. Its English name, Dwale, 

 is derived from the old provincial word dwaule, (dwaelen, 

 Dutch,) to wander, to be delirious. 



A beautiful bright green colour is prepared from the berries 

 for the use of miniature painters, and the ripe juice imparts a 

 fine durable purple to paper. 



Qualities. — The whole plant has a feeble odour of the nau- 

 seous kind. The root and leaves have a. fade or insipid taste 

 at first, which soon becomes nauseous and somewhat acrid, and 

 is not lost in the dried plant. The taste of the recent berries is 

 insipid, sweetish, and sub -astringent. Vauquelin found that 

 the leaves contain a substance resembling animal albumen, salts 

 with a base of potass, and a bitter principle on which its nar- 

 cotic properties depend ; and which has since been ascertained 

 by Brande to be an alkali, which he calls Atropia. He ob- 

 tained it by boiling the leaves in a very dilute sulphuric acid, 

 filtering the decoction and supersaturating it with potass, which 

 occasions a crystalline precipitate of impure atropia. It may 

 be rendered pure and white by repeatedly dissolving it in dilute 

 sulphuric acid, and precipitating by potass *. The seeds yield 



* Schweigger, Journ. xxviii. — For an improved method of obtaining it 

 by Mein, in consequence of the discovery of Runge, that its properties are 

 destroyed by alkalies, see Journ. de Vharm, xx. p. 87 ; or Dumas, Chim. 

 App. auoc Arts, v. 804. 



