Medical Properties of Flowers 



advise its destruction whenever I meet with it, in 

 spite of its beautiful autumnal tints. 



It would be too long even to mention many 

 other poisonous plants, however full of interest 

 they may be ; but the upas tree cannot altogether 

 be left out. We can many of us remember the 

 dreadful accounts of this tree, which we were 

 taught was one of the wonders of Java, and cer- 

 tainly the account of it, which was given by the 

 Dutch Surgeon Foersch about a hundred years 

 ago, was so circumstantial in all its details that it 

 is not surprising that it was fully believed. Darwin 

 naturally seized upon it, and in the Loves of the 

 Plants gave a full account of it, beginning with — 



" Fierce in dread silence on the blasted Heath 

 Fell Upas sits, the Hydra Tree of death," 



and in the appendix he gave Foersch's account in 

 full. But it is now known that the greater part 

 was pure invention, and what was true in it was 

 much exaggerated. Still there is such a tree in 

 Java, Antiaris toxicaria, of the same family as 

 the bread fruit and very poisonous ; and the 

 " blasted heath " in which it was said to grow 

 is not altogether imaginary, for the trees grow in 

 valleys which are unwholesome and even fatal to 

 animal life, not by reason of the upas tree, but 

 of the mephitic volcanic vapours escaping from 

 crevices in the ground. 



The Preacher reckoned among the qualities of 

 the wise man "certain knowledge of the things 

 131 



