ARUM DRACUNCULUS, 



OR, 



DRAGON ARUM. 



This extremely foetid poisonous * plant will not admit of sober description. Let us therefore 

 personify it. 



She + comes peeping from her purple crest with mischief fraught: from her green covert 

 projects a horrid spear of darkest jet, which she brandishes aloft: issuing from her nostrils 

 flies a noisome vapour infecting the ambient air: her hundred arms are interspersed with 

 white, as in the garments of the inquisition; and on her swollen trunk are observed the 

 speckles of a mighty dragon: her sex is strangely intermingled with the oppositely confusion 

 dire! — all framed for horror; or kind to warn the traveller that her fruits axe poison-berries, 

 grateful to the sight but fatal to the taste, such is the plan of Providence, and such her 

 wise resolves. 





a 



a 

 it 

 it 

 it 

 it 

 it 

 it 

 it 



Thy soul's first hope! thy mother's sweetest joy!" 

 Cried tender Laura, as she kiss'd her boy, 

 Oh wander not where Dragon Arum show'rs 

 Her baleful dews, and twines her purple flow'rs, 

 Lest round thy neck she throw her snaring arms, 

 Sap thy life's blood, and riot on thy charms. 

 Her shining berry, as the ruby bright, 

 Might please thy taste, and tempt thy eager sight: 

 Trust not this specious veil; beneath its guise, 

 In honey'd streams & fatal pouon lies." 



So Vice allures with Virtue' <t pleasing song, 

 And charms her victims with a Siren d tongue. 



Frances Arabella Rowden. 



* From the root, however, of this plant, a powerful and useful sternutatory may be made. 



t In this description the author has had in view the fancy of the ancients respecting that being whom they represented as hostile to man. 



f Hj«* & xot) iro\v7nte 



Kan' ftokxix 11 ^ * *■*% 

 Kpuvjo pivot XoxoiS 

 YLoikuomss 'i f W t Wfr 



Lo! with unnumbered hands, and countless feet, 

 The Fury comes, her destin'd prey to meet ; 

 Deep in the covert hid. — 



Sophocles. 



X Linnseus places this plant in the class Gynandria, other authors refer it to Monoscia, and in our reformed system it comes under the 

 class Many Males, order, flowers spathed. 



