POISONOUS PLANTS 



It will very readily be admitted that anything approaching 

 to a full enumeration of the plants which are, or are sus- 

 pected to be, poisonous to animals, still more a reliable 

 account of their effects, would be a task of extreme difficulty. 

 Moreover, a mere catalogue has little value. The attempt 

 has therefore been made to collect primarily well-substan- 

 tiated information relating to common poisonous plants. 

 This naturally involves a preferential treatment of British 

 and European genera, since there have been for a longer 

 time opportunities of exact study. At the same time, no, 

 doubt can be entertained that many poisonous species cause 

 harm in the East, in the Tropics, in America, and in the 

 Colonies, and that probably in time our knowledge of such 

 poisonings will be very extensive. But the author's 

 Colonial correspondents agree in regarding the state of our 

 present knowledge as too slender and inexact to warrant, 

 or even to make possible, extensive descriptions, either 

 botanical or clinical. Valuable work has been done, and is 

 still going on, in America and the Colonies, and the depart- 

 mental publications and agricultural journals already con- 

 tain precise information on many important poisonous 

 plants. Thus the Eeport for 1898 of the United States 

 Bureau of Animal Industry contains a summary of numerous 

 American species, by V. K. Chesnut ; several important 

 papers have appeared in the Transvaal, Cape, and later 

 United South Africa agricultural journals; the home 

 literature contains a few papers by Colonial veterinarians ; 

 and in South Africa L. H. Walsh has collected the avail- 

 able facts in a short but exceedingly valuable brochure. 



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