48 FISHERIES OF THE ORIENTAL REGION, 



course of the practice, is that fish partly or wholly poisoned are 

 exceedingly dangerous as human food, and there are not wanting 

 instances of fatal results from eating them when captured in this 

 fashion. 



The following are the plants referred : — 



1. Anamirta cocculus, Wight, Arn. In Malay Tuba-biji, 

 also Tuba-tuni. This is the well-known plant, more familiar to 

 most persons under the name of Cocculus indicus, belonging to the 

 natural order MENisPERMACEiE, and is perhaps the most generally 

 used as a fish-poison, and certainly the most efficacious. It is a 

 climber belonging to the Malayan flora, extending over large trees, 

 with a stout woody stem between two and three inches in diameter 

 with a deeply-cracked, corky, ash-colored bark. It used to be 

 called Menispermum cocculus or Cocculus suberosus, but as it has 

 stamens combined in a central column and no corolla, it is made 

 into a separate genus called Anamirta. Dr. Chistison recommends 

 the medical jurist to familiarize himself with this plant because 

 used as a medicine, it is widely used also for destroying fish, 

 and also by brewers as a substitute for hops,* an adulteration 

 which is prohibited under heavy penalties. What renders it more 

 formidable as a poison is the difficulty of tracing it, for it leaves 

 no marks on the viscera after death, by which it could be detected. 

 The poisonous properties are principally in the fruit, which is a 

 juicy berry, varying in size from a pea to a small cherry. It is 

 sub-globose, notched, dark brown in color, rough and wrinkled. 

 There is a husk which is acrid and bitter, enveloping a thin 

 bivalved white shell, from which arises a central placenta, con- 

 tracted at the base and divided above into two cells. Between 

 the placenta and the shell is a yellowish, oily, very bitter seed of 

 semilunar form. The poisonous qualities depend on a substance 

 called pycrotoxine,f a white crystalline substance, usually crystal- 

 lizing in needles, granular or in transparent plates or silky flexible 



* So Dr. Chistison says ; but more probably to render thf) beer more 

 intoxicating. 



t See Ann. de Chim. LXXX., p. 209 ; Ann. de Chim. et de Phys. liv. 181 ; 

 Lancet, Jan. 11, 1851, p. 47. 



