THE POISONOUS PLANTS OF BOMBAY. 249 



cotton fabrics, the marks thus produced being indelible, leaving the 

 fabric perfectly uninjured at the same time. Hence it is that the fruit 

 comes to be named the Indian marking-nut. Ashes or quick-lime and 

 water are used to fix the black colour. " The green nuts," says Rox- 

 burgh, " well pounded into a pulp, makes good lime." " The resinous 

 juice is insoluble in water and is only diffusible in spirits of wine," adds 

 Roxburgh, " for it soon falls to the bottom, unless the menstruum be 

 previously alkalized ; the solution then is pretty complete, and of deep 

 colour. It sinks in, but soon unites perfectly with, expressed oils." 

 Hence it is that the natives use cocoanut, teel, or ground-nut oil to 

 wipe off the skin -recent stains of the resinous fluid, or to reduce the 

 acridity of its poisons. Brandis says that the oil of the seeds of the 

 marking-nut mixed with the milk of Euphorbia (which species, he 

 does not mention — K.R.K.) is made into bird-lime by the wild tribes 

 of the Satpura range in the Central Provinces. 



POISONOUS PROPERTIES. 



The marking-nut is a distinct vesicant of the skin, if it were nothing 

 more. But it is even worse, as will have been gathered from the 

 foregoing remarks. It only remains to look at its properties from 

 the clinical point of view. Some escape its action beyond a slight 

 irritation where the nut is locally applied. Others suffer from 

 irritation of even untouched parts, while some others suffer 

 violently even from a distance, though not themselves the users 

 of the irritant fluid. Their face, their eyes, their ears become 

 rapidly swollen, not unoften with great constitutional disturbance, 

 followed by much prostration. The fruit is seldom, if ever used 

 internally for the purpose of poisoning. Jail-convicts and malingerers 

 sometimes use it for producing blisters and ulceration of the skin to 

 avoid work. Dr. Norman Chevers bears me out in this assertion. 

 " Dr. Hornigberger notes," says this experienced veteran Medico-Jurist, 

 " that at Lahore he discovered that some of the prisoners rubbed the 

 juice of this nut on their eyes ; others had rubbed it on their bodies. 

 The former were apparently suffering from incurable ophthalmia, the 

 latter from a kind of ring-worm. By this means they continued to 

 remain on the sick-list, eating and drinking without being necessitated 



