Penfyhania, Philadelphia. 79 



was fwelled to fuch a degree, that he was as 

 ftiiF as a log of wood, and could only be 

 turned about in fheets. 



On relating in the winter of the year 

 1750, the poifonous qualites of the fwamp 

 fumach to my Tungfircemy who attended 

 me on my travels, he only laughed, and 

 looked upon the whole as a fable, in 

 which opinion he was confirmed by his 

 having often handled the tree the autumn 

 before, cut many branches of it, which he 

 had carried for a good while in his hand in 

 order to preferve its feeds, and put many 

 into the herbals, and all this, without feel- 

 ing the leafl inconvenience. He would 

 therefore, being a kind of philofopher in 

 his own way, take nothing for granted of 

 which he had no fufficient proofs, efpeci- 

 ally as he had his own experience in the 

 fummer of the year 1749, to fupport the 

 contrary opinion. But in the next fummer 

 his fyftem of philofophy was overturned. 

 For his hands fwelled and he felt a violent 

 pain, and itching in his eyes as foon as 

 he touched the tree, and this inconvenience 

 not only attended him when he meddled 

 with this kind of fumach, but even when 

 he had any thing to do with the Rhus ra^ 

 dicans, or that fpecies of fumach which 

 climbs along the trees, and is not by far fo 



poifonous 



