EVIL PLANTS 177 



pieces of flesh out of any portion of your person 

 which may be exposed to it in passing, and if it find 

 itself unable to do this, will suddenly tweak your hat 

 from your head, and hold it suspended in mid-air, 

 waiting with fiendish pertinacity for an opportunity 

 to wreak its bloodthirsty vengeance on your fingers 

 when you release it. Smaller growths, respecting 

 whose names and orders I must confess to feeling 

 but httle curiosity, afflict you when trodden upon 

 or crushed beneath you as you seat yourself for 

 the midday meal with odours so truly awful that 

 hunger gives way to a wild longing to escape their 

 foetor. Several lilies, probably nearly akin to the 

 destructive, poisonous South African " Tulp," are a 

 great danger in the early portion of the rainy season 

 to horses and cattle, which should never be allowed 

 to graze at that season of the year ; whilst another 

 abomination is the Eryth7'ina tormentosa, whose 

 sole excuse for existence consists in its impenetra- 

 bility when used for fencing purposes. I cannot 

 conceive it possible for any person or animal to 

 pass through such a hedge with anything left but 

 his bare skeleton. 



Before exhausting all the vials of my wrath upon 

 these undesirable members of the vegetable king- 

 dom, however, T must reserve the most vituperative 

 of all in a special paragraph to do inadequate justice 

 to the loathly cow-itch bean. This unspeakable 

 pest, which could only have been devised in a 

 moment of boundless vindictiveness towards the 

 human race as a whole ; this foul, useless weed 

 known to science as the Mucuna, grows in great 

 quantities in old native gardens, on the top of the 



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