In My Vicarage Garden 



scries, says that he dissected a cock pheasant in 

 the month of June and found the crop full of the 

 roots of the common buttercup. Lucretius noted 

 this, and having said — 



" Quod all cibus est aliis fuat acre venenum " — 



proved it by the statement that hemlock and 

 veratrum were poisonous to every other animal, 

 but that goats fattened on them, and that vera- 

 trum was also a fattening food for quails. I 

 cannot say how far this is verified by modern 

 observation, though I have asked for information 

 from many ; but I do not know in what part of 

 Italy Lucretius made his observations. 



It is an obvious truism that people are differ- 

 ently affected by poisonous plants, but it is hard 

 to explain why it should be so. Leaving out of 

 the question poisons taken knowingly for special 

 reasons, many are variously affected by them in 

 other ways. Some persons have been made 

 seriously ill by sleeping under or near yew trees ; 

 and others have been still more distressed by 

 even passing through tracts of the California bay, 

 a bush with a very pungent scent, which in my 

 own garden I have seen produce very unpleasant 

 effects to some people, while to others it is nothing 

 but a pleasant smell ; and the poison oak of 

 America will give headaches to some passing at 

 many yards' distance, and to many has been quite 

 fatal, while on others it has no effect ; but it has 

 such a decidedly bad character that I always 

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