16 



KEW GARDENS. 



powers lie dormant, and strangers have no business to volunteer 

 dubious experiments. The horticultural official, who serves a 

 friend of ours, places a stinging plant, the Loasa urens^ with its 

 pretty yellow flowers and dangerous leaves, in a conspicuous part 

 of his greenhouse, to teach meddlesome children — and ladies — by 

 the blisters on their poor hands, that it is safer to admire than to 

 touch. Public and private establishments are quite different af- 

 fairs, and such tricks at home look much like inexcusable treachery, 

 but the instance will show what caution ought to be exercised in 

 a national botanic garden. 



The most deadly plant ever possessed by Kew, the Jati^oplia 

 urens^ is no longer to be found there ; it has either been killed off 

 like a mad dog, or starved to death in isolation like a leper. Its 

 possession nearly cost one valuable life, that of Mr. Smith, the 

 present respected curator. Some five and twenty years ago he 

 was reaching over the Jatropha, when its fine bristly stings touch- 

 ed his wrist. The first sensation was a numbness and swelling of 

 the lips ; the action of the poison was on the heart, circulation 

 was stopped, and Mr. Smith soon fell unconscious, the last thing 

 he remembered being cries of ' Run for the doctor.' Either the 

 doctor was skilful, or the dose of poison injected not quite, though 

 nearly, enough ; but afterwards the man in whose house it was, 

 got it shoved up in a corner, and would not come within arm's 

 length of it. He watered the diabolical j)lant with a pot having 

 an indefinitely long spout. If the vase itself contained a quid 

 pro quo^ he is not greatly to be blamed. Another not much less 

 fearful species of jatropha has appeared at Kew — and disap- 

 peared. 



We must now ascend the spiral stair-case, and run round the 

 gallery — for the sake of looking down on the luxui'iant tree-ferns 

 and palms, admiring the charming effect of the symmetrical flow- 

 er-beds, and gazing along the vista of infant Deodaras at the noble 

 Pagoda — only wanting the Dragons and Bells at the angles of 

 the stratum super stratum to present a complete fac-simile of the 

 far-famed one at Nankin. At this height the creepers admit of 

 close inspection : — Note the flowers of the Aristolochia gigas^ 

 shaped like a helmet, and so huge that the children in South 

 America, according to Humboldt, wear them as hats. Aristolochia 

 is Englished Birth-wort, for reasons which the scholar will under- 

 stand. It is ' curious, if true,' that a not indigenous species should 



