61. JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1892, 



It may perhaps be useful to explain how vegetable poisons act. 

 Their action is either local or remote. When they act locally as, for 

 instance, on the skin or stomach, they irritate the parts direct ; they 

 are therefore called Irritants. The irritation may or may not be 

 followed by inflammation. Their action in this respect is sometimes 

 purely mechanical as, for instance, in the' irritation produced by the 

 rigid brown hairs covering the sigmoid rods of Mucuna lirurieiis 

 (cowhage). When poisons act remotely they do so either through 

 the nervous system and are hence called Neurotic ; or through the heart 

 and are hence called Cardiac. Cardiac poisons distinctly affect the 

 heart in the first instance, and cause death by a sudden or gradual 

 failure of its action. Neurotic poisons either affect the brain or the 

 spinal cord singly, or both together. In the first case the poisons 

 are known as Cerebral, and produce delirium or torpor which goes 

 under the name of Narcotism, the poisons themselves being termed 

 narcotics ; in the second case, where the poisons affect the sj^inal cord 

 thev are called spinal poisons. They cause increase or decrease or 

 total loss of sensation or motion in parts supplied by the nerves issu- 

 ing from the spinal cord ; thirdly, when the neurotic poisons act on 

 the brain and spinal cord jointly they are called Cerebrospinal 

 poisons. In them we find a combination of the symptoms of both 

 the cerebral and spinal poisons. I am not aware of any vegetable 

 poison acting as what is called a Septic poison, i.e., producing death 

 by destroying the vitality of blood as is the case in colubrine or 

 viperine poisoning. 



STROBILANTHES CALLOSUS— (JVees.) 



Marathi— KARAVI (^f^rff.) 

 (Natural Order — Acanthace^.) 



Description. — A shrub 6 to 8 feet. 



Root. — Bearing buds of the future plant, which are thickly 

 covered over with 8-10 stiff, tough imbricated scales, studded with 

 fine white wavy woolly hairs from three to four lines in length. 



Stem. — Erect, csespitose, irregularly quadrilateral, rounded off 

 at the angles ; grooved often deeply, throughout, thus marking off 

 each of, the four angles of the stem; distinctly jointed like the 

 bamboo down to the central pith ; joints bilaterally swollen above 

 the point of juncture, varying in leugth from a span to a span and 



