OF PLANTS. 197 



of the most violent vegetable poisons, Strychnine and 

 Brucine, occur in them. Some of our most active medi- 

 cinal substances are especially known on this account ; for 

 instance, the St. Ignatius's beans (Ignatia amara, from 

 Manilla), and the Nux Vomica (Strychnos nux vomica y 

 distributed throughout the Tropics.) 



I must not neglect to mention here a strange custom 

 of the inhabitants of Madagascar, among whom, in a kind 

 of divine judgment, the strength of the stomach decides 

 upon guilt or innocence. When any one is accused of a 

 crime, he is compelled, in an open assembly, under the 

 directions of the priests, to swallow a Thangin nut (from 

 Tanghinia veneniferd) : if his stomach is in a condition 

 to reject this frightful poison upward, he is pronounced 

 innocent ; if not, the demonstration of his guilt becomes 

 at the same time his punishment, and the death of the 

 unhappy creature concludes the evidence. 



It would not be difficult to make some of the more 

 important characters of the two families I have mentioned, 

 so clear, even to a person unacquainted with Botany, that 

 he would be enabled readily to distinguish any plant 

 belonging to them. Very different is it with the fol- 

 lowing, the last group, the Jussieuan family of Nettle-plants 

 or Urticacete. The plants belonging to this vary in the 

 most striking manner in their external forms, from the 

 smallest, most insignificent weeds, like our common Pel- 

 litory of the wall, and our Nettles, to vast and most 

 stately trees like the Bread-fruits (Ar to carpus integrifolia 

 and incisa), which, with their wide- stretched branches and 

 broad beautifully formed leaves, overshadow the huts of 

 the South Sea islander, who lives upon their savoury 

 fruit. As in the family of the Spurges, only some few 

 plants bestow, in their seed, a pleasant, nut-like kernel 



