440 THE MANCHINEAL. 



the same countries belong the Ignatia amara, whose seeds are known 

 by the name of " St. Ignatius' Beans." These beans contain two 

 alkaloids, Strychnine and Brudne, which we also extract from the 

 Nux vomica, and which must be classed among the most violent 

 poisons known to the toxicologist. 



While speaking of the poisonous plants of South America, a few 

 words in reference to the Manchineal (Hippomane Mancenilla) will 

 not be inappropriate. This tree thrives best, it is said, on the sea- 

 shore. It bears a profusion of very pretty fruit, resembling in colour 

 and form the Red Apple (the Spanish Manzanilla), and exhaling an 

 agreeable, lemon-like odour. They are, therefore, scarcely less be- 

 guiling than Dead Sea fruits ; but they are also very poisonous, yet 

 less deadly than the milky juice which flows from the slightest in- 

 cision made in the tree's thick and grayish bark. This juice, received 

 into the stomach, or introduced into the blood through a wound, slays 

 the victim with awful quickness. If it do but touch the skin, it 

 excites a violent irritation, and raises swellings or boils of the worst 

 description. The very vapour which it emits causes a painful itching 

 in the eyes, the lips, and the nostrils. It was formerly asserted that 

 to sleep under the shade of a Manchineal tree was certain death ; 

 but the naturalist Jacquin, in the interests of science, courageously 

 made the experiment, and proved the falsity of the story. 



The Manchineal is not unfrequently confounded with other poi- 

 sonous Euphorbiacese, as the Sapium aucuparium and the Exccecaria 

 agallochia, which flourish in very nearly the same regions. The 

 Exccecaria, it is said, is not less dangerous than the Manchineal. It 

 owes its name (ex, and ccecus, " blind ") to the circumstance (or the 

 fable) that some European sailors, while felling wood in the forest, 

 having accidentally struck with their axe a tree of this species, were 

 blinded by the milky juice which sprang into their eyes. 



By a kind of compensation, the Tropical Forests, which contain so 

 many poisonous plants, produce also a great number of the highest 

 utility to man. Some offer him efficient remedies against the 

 diseases which beset his frame ; others nourish him with the fecula 



