VEGETABLE POISONS. 333 
effect being almost instantaneous. When, in October, 
1860, I revisited Cakaudrove, a poisoner had just been 
strangled by orders of the ruling chief; he having been 
detected in putting a certain drug into a cigarette, which 
proved fatal to the smoker. The poisoner, on finding 
himself condemned to die, not only pleaded guilty to 
this crime, but also confessed to having been instru- 
mental in bringing about the death of no less than three 
hundred people, all victims to his infamous art. 
There being no chance of gaining any direct informa- 
tion about the more subtle poisons from the lips of the 
natives themselves, an examination of all plants possess- 
ing narcotic properties would supply the deficiency, if it 
were not for an anomaly, as yet insufficiently explained, 
that certain species shunned as poisonous in one country, 
are eaten with impunity in another. There are mush- 
rooms which in England are absolutely noxious, and on 
the Continent wholesome food. In Fiji, the leaves of 
the Boro yaloka ni gato (Solanum oleraceum, Dun.), 
a spiny species, closely allied to Solanum nigrum, Linn., 
and those of the Boro dina (Solanum anthropophagorum, 
Seem.) as well as the fruit of the latter and that of the 
Bora Sou or Sousou (Solanum repandum, Forst.), are 
eaten ; the latter in soups or with yam. I was in some 
measure prepared for this, having seen quantities of 
the first-named species, as well as another nightshade 
(Solanum nigrum, Linn.), exposed for sale in the market 
of Port Louis, Mauritius, and learnt on inquiry that they 
were common pot-herbs, eaten both by the white and 
coloured population, as intimated by Bojer in his Hortus 
Mauritanus. Strychnos colubrina, Linn., is met with in 
