THE POISONOUS PLANTS OF BOMBAY. 27 



double-flowered plants, there is the D. fastuosa — ruhra of South 

 America. The following note on D. sangninea (Ruiz. et. Pav.) by 

 M. Berthold Seeman, Naturalist, H. M.'s Herald, may perhaps interest 

 my readers as an illustration of popular faith in the plant — a mere 

 superstition — among the American Indians of Darien and of Choco. 

 These superstitious people of tropical America prepare from 

 the seeds of the plant a decoction, which is given to children to 

 produce a state of excitement in which they are supposed to 

 possess the power of discovering gold. In any place where the un- 

 happy children happen to fall down, digging is commenced ; and as 

 the soil nearly everywhere abounds with gold-dust, an amount of more 

 or less value is obtained (p. 170, Vol. XI., Pharm. Journal 1852). This 

 passage I find particularly worth quoting, as in India the administra- 

 tion of datura seeds to unsuspecting victims is not for collecting gold 

 likely to be found in Indian soil-dust, but for searching the pockets of 

 travellers and shop-keepers and depriving them of the gold and silver 

 that may be with or about them, after they are well stupified with 

 Datura seeds administered in various articles of food and drink. This 

 will be amply evident in my remarks to follow under the head of 

 " Poisonous Properties. " 



I wish to dwell for a moment in naming the Double-floweeed 

 varieties of the genus Datura^ as in my experience I have found them 

 of great garden-beauty, having grown them in my garden, in Thana 

 and Ratnagiri. The double-flowered varieties have been named (by 

 writers well worthy of recognition) as follows : — 



I. ( (a) Datura cornigera florepleno. 



White ( (b) Datura Knightii. 



II. Purple. Datura fastuosa — florepleno. 



III. Yellow. Datura chlorantha-florepleno. 



IV. Purple- White. Datura fastuosa — rubra (S. America), 

 Synonym — D. Wagmanii (Hooker's Ind. Kew.). 



It must be noted here that in the double-flowers of Datura of all 

 colours the anther-bearing stamens are changed into petals or perianth 

 either antherless, or bearing anther-lobes more or less modified, on the 

 extreme margin of the inner corolla-tube. " Indeed," says Kerner, 

 " there are grounds for believing that all petals are originally modified 

 from stamens. " Be it noted here that double-flowers remain on the plant 

 on which they grow, two or three days longer than the single-flowers. 



