CICUTA VIROSA.— LONG-LEAVED WATER HEMLOCK, OR COWBANE. 
Class V. PENTANDRIA — Order II. DIGYNIA. 
Natural Order, UMBELLIFER^E. THE UMBELLIFEROUS TRIBE. 
Fig (a) represents the calyx; (6) the calyx with the germen and styles; (c) a perfect flower. 
This plant has often been confounded with the (Enanthe Phellandrium, in consequence of the same English 
! name being applied to both. By comparing the two plants, together with the botanical descriptions of each, 
| their specific differences will be readily distinguished, and the virtues of each accurately ascertained. 
This plant, which is much more powerful in its effects than the Conium maculatum, is supposed by 
1 Haller and many others to have yielded the celebrated Athenian poison: and as goats will not touch the 
j common Hemlock, there is some reason to think that it is the species referred to by Lucretius : 
* 
Videre licet pinguescere ssepe cicuta 
Barbigeras pecudes, hominique est acre venenum. 
The Cicuta virosa is by far the most active of the poisonous plants of Great Britain; fortunately, 
: however, for us, it is somewhat scarce, or at least, very local in this country. It grows in several parts of 
! England, in ditches, and by the sides of rivers and lakes, flowering in July and August. Sir William 
! Hooker, in his “ Flora Scotica ,” enumerates the following as its principal stations in Scotland: the side of 
j Loch-end, near Edinburgh; Pow Mill, Kinrosshire; in marshes near Forfar Loch; Otterton Loch, Fifeshire; 
about Mugdoch, Bardowie, and Douglaston Lochs; Loch near new Kilpatrick; and also near Glasgow, 
| where it occurs in great abundance. 
The root is perennial, tuberous, hollow, with many whorled fibres, and divided by transverse partitions 
! into numerous cells. The stem, like the root, is very large, hollow, leafy, branched, furrowed, smooth, and 
| rises to the height of three or four feet. The leaves are bi-ternate, of a bright green colour, and stand upon 
long foot-stalks; the radical ones pinnated; the leaflets deeply serrated, tapering at each end, from one to 
! two inches long, and more or less decurrent. The flowers are produced in large, many-rayed umbels, partly 
| terminal, and partly opposite to the leaves. The general bracteas are linear, seldom more than one or two, 
! and frequently entirely wanting; the partial ones numerous, narrow, pointed, and unequal. The calyx 
| consists of five ovate, acute, somewhat unequal, permanent leaves. The flowers are very small; the petals 
I five, white, nearly heart-shaped, and incurved at the apex; the filaments are thread-shaped, spreading, about 
j the length of the corolla, supporting roundish anthers; the germen hemispherical, ribbed; the styles two, 
filiform, at first short and erect, but subsequently elongated and spreading, with obtuse stigmas. The fruit 
is roundish, smooth, and divisible into two parts, having each one seed, convex, and marked with five 
flattish plane ribs, and on the other, with three prominent vittse in the vallecules, which afford an excellent 
generic character. 
Poisonous Effects and Morbid Appearances. — This violent poison produces the following 
symptoms: — Dazzling, obscurity of vision, vertigoes, cephalalgia, vacillating walk, agitation, dryness of 
throat, ardent thirst, eructations, vomiting of greenish matter, respiration frequent and interrupted, tetanic 
contraction of the jaws, lipothymia, sometimes followed by a state of lethargy, and coldness of the ex- 
tremities; at other times a furious delirium, or attacks more or less approaching to epilepsy, especially in 
children, and young girls, which frequently terminate in death. In one or two cases, swelling of the face 
