316 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1892. 



the acridity. When the flower-stalk matures, it emits the offensive 

 odour of a rotting carcass, and attracts swarms of blue-bottles. 



The Poisonous Properties or the Plant. 



The whole plant is acrid. It has never been used for criminal 

 purposes, but when used for culinary purposes, it has often irritated 

 the mouth, fauces and pharynx to an alarming extent. The late 

 Dr. Vinayak Govind Gidha, L.M. & S., saw, in conjunction with 

 the late Dr. Sakharam Arjun, some cases wherein much irritation 

 of the mouth and throat followed the culinary use of the flower- 

 stalk. The bulb is acrid likewise ; but I am not aware of its ever 

 being used for culinary purposes. Nor do I know of its ever being 

 used as food in famine times when people are hard pressed and eat 

 whatever can keep off hunger, although in the late Dekkan Famine 

 of 1 877-78, in the Nasik District, Teri A lit, ( Colocasia antiquorum) 

 appears to have been used. It is well known that the English 

 Cuckoo-pint {Arum maculatum) of this order is so poisonous that 

 even a small piece of its leaf when eaten by children has been 

 known to produce convulsions. But the chief point I wish to note 

 in connection with it is, that although the root and the plant are 

 highly poisonous, the poison may be removed from them, and a 

 wholesome flour made from the root . — [Anne Pratt.) The other 

 representatives of the Arad order, such, for instance, as the plant 1 

 am now describing, are equally noted for the readiness with which 

 they part with the acrid element they contain, especially by means 

 of heat. Long boiling before using the flower-stalks renders 

 them harmless, though even sometimes the acridity is per- 

 ceptible. It is not, therefore, always agreeable to eat curried Shewla, 

 thouo-h it may not be always positively unsafe to do so. The 

 fact of the acridity disappearing on boiling is indicative of the volatile 

 nature of the acrid element. Dr. Sakharam Arjun has noted his 

 experience regarding the poisonous properties of the root of Pythonium 

 Wallichicmum in a paper which, if I remember right, he read some 

 years ago before the Grant Medical College Society. But not having 

 all the mimbers of the Society's Transactions and printed Proceedings, 

 I regret I am unable to cite the cases he mentions. I know from 

 my own practice that in several instances severe irritation of the 



