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accidents due to mechanical injuries. According to this logic, 
needles, knives and forks would be classed as poisonous in a 
list of poisonous metals. Then too, such common plants as 
dandelion, chickory and marsh marigold are cited, in spite of 
the fact that these plants form part of the diet of thousands of 
people. No one under normal conditions could be forced to eat 
sufficient burdock root, hydrastis or berberis to prove fatal. 
There are hundreds of plants listed in these pages which are 
practically harmless in their normal form, yet when altered, as 
when their active constituents are extracted, and when ad- 
ministered in concentrated form, may prove injurious, if not 
poisonous. These plants should not be classed as poisonous, 
however, merely because in their changed form they are harmful 
in excessive amounts. Most of these and similar plants should 
be, and usually are classed as medicinal. It is doubtless true 
that all the poisonous plants are medicinal, yet only a small 
percentage of the medicinal plants are poisonous, in the generally 
accepted sense of the term. А clear line should be drawn between 
the mechanical-toxic and the medicinal-non-toxic plants. I 
suppose there is scarcely a food plant which some time or other 
has not been reported injurious or harmful to some one. This, 
however, should not be the test as to whether a plant is poisonous 
or non-poisonous. This ground is untenable and has resulted 
in the inclusion of hundreds of plants in the present volumes 
which are universally conceded to be non-poisonous. It is the 
author's elastic use of the word poison which is to me the weak 
point of the book. The volume is concluded with a catalogue of 
the plants of the world, poisonous or injurious to man. This 
list, like the manual, contains hundreds of economic and relatively 
harmless plants. 
The author has brought together in these two parts the results 
of experimentation and research carried on under the direction 
of the United States Department of Agriculture at various 
experiment stations, as well as portions of the work of such men 
as Nelson, Peters and Bessey. This in itself would make the 
volume valuable, but added to this is the knowledge and fertile 
experience of the author who has for many years been one of 
the chief exponents of this line of work. 
