Effects of Poisons on Living Vegetables. 125 



to the plants themselves by such treatment : it has even been 

 positively asserted that the destruction of the plant is the neces- 

 sary consequence of the application of certain vegetable poisons 

 in some instances. 



In the progress of science, next in importance to the accumu- 

 lation of true knowledge, is the necessity to disencumber our- 

 selves of error. If the results of the present experiments possess 

 no other merit, they will be esteemed interesting on this account 

 alone. I have been led to the present investigation by perusing 

 a notice of experiments of a similar nature, by M. Marcaire 

 Princep, a professor of botany in Geneva, in the " Bulletin des 

 Sciences Naturelles," for March, 1830, of which the following is 

 an extract : 



" The experiments detailed in this memoir, have for their ob- 

 ject to prove that the juices or extracts of plants, poisonous to 

 animals, are equally so to the vegetables from which they are 

 obtained. Thus M. Marcaire has succeeded in killing branches, 

 and even entire individual plants, of the datura stramonium j 

 hyosciamus niger, and mornordica elaterium, by plunging them into 

 distilled water, charged with the juices and extracts of these 

 plants, or even by watering them with this narcotic water." 



M. Goeppert, of Breslau, has published in the annals of Pog- 

 gendorfF, an account of experiments from which he derived very 

 different results." But neither of these authors extended their 

 experiments to the introduction of poisons into the substance of 

 the plants. 



I first confined myself to a repetition of the experiments of M. 

 Marcaire, but obtained results entirely at variance with his. I 

 now determined to pursue the subject on a more extensive scale. 

 In the garden of the Philadelphia Alms-house Infirmary, I select- 

 ed a number of young and thriving plants, and assisted by the 

 gardener, and several of the resident physicians, I applied the 

 following named poisons, as hereafter specified, taking care to 

 wound the bark of the perennial, and the interior parts of the an- 

 nual plants, so that the poison should be directly applied to the 

 wounded sap-vessels. The poisons used, were, the extracts of 

 stramonium, belladonna, and cicuta ; the essential oil of nicoti- 

 ana tobacum, diluted hydrocyanic acid, and powdered oxydum 

 arsenici. 



Experiment 1. September 18th, 1830. A strong thick solution 



