120 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 184-5. 



and stomach. — -This plant he adjudges very suitable to our northern constitu- 

 tions ; and that it is a very agreeable bitter astringent, serving to prevent, if 

 not to cure, most chronical distempers. 



Notwithstanding all his encomiums of this exotic, the author is inclined to 

 think we might receive as much benefit from some plants of our own growth; 

 were people industrious to search after them; some of which are veronica, 

 lingua cervina, marrubium, hepatica, cichoreum, &c. 



On the Connought-Worm.* By William Molyneux, Esq. Sec. of the Phil. Soc. 



of Dublin. N° 1 68, p. 876. 



The Connought-worm is said to be the only poisonous animal in Ireland : but 

 whether it be really so, or not, I cannot assert on my own experience. Some 

 of them are as thick as a mSn's thumb, and above 3 inches long, and some of 

 them live so long as to have fine hair, thinly dispersed over their bodies. The 

 most experienced people of the country agree, that the animal is poisonous, 

 though no satisfactory experiment has proved it. The reasons for thinking the 

 animal pernicious, if eaten by a beast, are these : first, the disease imputed to 

 this animal seldom or never affects the cattle but in autumn, and then only this 

 insect is to be found; secondly, it seldom or never affects any cattle but what 

 feed in low marshy grounds, and there only this animal frequents ; thirdly, cows 

 which are greedy feeders, by great morsels, by reason of their chewing it after- 

 wards in their cud, but especially swine that feed in low grounds, are the only 

 creatures troubled by this worm ; fourthly, the worm is very rare, and scarcely to 

 be found in seven years, and so likewise is the distemper that proceeds from it, 

 it being rare to have a beast affected by it. As to the symptoms that attend its 

 venom, they are swelling in the head, and, as a peculiar characteristic, the 

 swelling and procidentia ani, insomuch that the rectum will hang out above 

 half a foot. The cure of this malady in black cattle, is a drench of the herb 

 bear's-foot, rue, garlic, and butter and beer ; but for swine, raddle pounded 

 small and mixed with butter-milk. These are only used by the English 

 husbandmen. But the Irish, as they certainly impute the malady to this 

 insect, so they draw the remedy from the same ; for they assert, that if a hole 



* This insect is the larva or caterpillar of the Spinx Elpenor. Lin. or Elephant Hawk-Moth. In 

 August it retires beneath the surface of the ground, and changes to a chrysalis, out of which in the 

 succeeding May proceeds the complete insect. There can be little doubt, but that the poisonous 

 qualities ascribed to the caterpillar in this paper, are entirely imaginar)' : many caterpillars, however, 

 are of a slightly acrimonious nature ; and some few are covered with a kind of brittle hair, which, 

 when rubbed on the skin, produces an effect nearly similar to that of the substance called cowage or 

 cowitch, viz. the down from the pods of the Do&Ao* j9n<ne««. Lin. 



