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A strange mode of utilizing cactus spines is for the torture of 
prisoners by savages. It is reported that the Apache Indians, 
during the war of 1880, having captured some of their own people 
who had taken service with our Government as spies, gathered a 
pile of inflammable material, topped it with a mass of cactuses, 
threw the bound and naked captives upon the pile, where they 
were held fast by the great number of spines which penetrated 
deeply into the flesh, and in this position were burned. 
The protection offered by the possession of poisonous prop- 
erties is utilized by the Indians of northern Mexico in a peculiar 
species of Lophophora, or as they were formerly called, Anhalo- 
nium, natives of the region named. Most of the bodies of these 
plants are beneath the surface of the earth, only an inch or two 
of the top being aérial. These tops are cut off and dried, becom- 
ing greatly reduced in size and of a button-like form, so that they 
are popularly known as mezcal or muscal buttons. At certain 
times, the Indians gather for religious feasts and ceremonies, 
on which occasions they chew these buttons, swallowing the 
juice. A narcotic or delirifacient effect is produced, the subject 
going into a state of bodily paralysis, resembling sleep to an 
observer, but the mind being in a condition of trance, in which 
visions are seen and strange experiences are imagined. This 
procedure is thus in the same class as the use of opium or hashish 
by the orientals. If an excessive amount is taken, or if the 
e 
quently eae in ae th. These plants have been chemically 
analyzed and their narcotic properties have been found to reside 
in a series of powerfully poisonous alkaloids. Efforts have been 
ade to utilize these alkaloids in medicine, but their field of 
usefulness has not yet been determined, and they are regarded 
rather as medical curiosities than as therapeutical agents. 
Another poisonous species is the night-blooming cereus of the 
West Indies. The flowers, and to a less extent the stems of this 
plant have been utilized in medicine, asa heart tonic. Some 
chemists have extracted an alkaloidal principle, others equally 
competent and careful have failed todo so. Some physicians 
