THE BUTTERCUP 
91 
do either by pulling up the root, or by plucking off the 
liower and preventing it from dispersing its seed. The 
root of the buttercup is of a highly stimulating property if 
taken in an uncooked state, and its iuice will occasion 
sneezing ; but boiling deprives this as well as many other 
vegetable productions of its noxious qualities. Drying in 
the sun has a similar effect upon it : so that the hay is 
not at all injured by its acrimonious nature. 
All the species of crowfoot possess the power of raising 
blisters upon the skin ; and, when judiciously applied, are 
sometimes as serviceable, in cases of inflammation, as an 
application of cantharides, and are attended with a less 
degree of suffering. From unskilful management, how- 
ever, in the method of using them, very painful results 
have occasionally followed; and this is the more frequent 
as they are more generally administered by persons igno- 
rant both of the nature of disease and medicines, than by 
the regular practitioner; and, in such hands, it is very 
evident that those remedies only can be pronounced safe 
which possess little power. The wounds on his limbs 
which the mendicant sometimes finds it profitable to make, 
as an appeal to the benevolence of the compassionate, are 
said to be caused by an application of this plant. 
The leaves of two species of clematis (a plant of the 
same natural order as the ranunculus) are also used for 
this purpose. The Ostiacks of Siberia are accustomed, 
in cases of inflammation, to produce a blister on the skin 
by means of a fungus which grows on the birch-tree ; and 
the people of the Hebrides use, almost entirely, the vege- 
table blister of two species of ranunculus, the celery- 
leaved kind and the sort called lesser spear-wort; both 
plants growing by lakes and ditches. 
Our spring buttercup is the bulbous-rooted crowfoot. 
It commences blooming in May. 
The properties of the creeping crowfoot (Ranunculus 
repens) are very similar to those of the spring buttercup. 
The acrid crowfoot (Ranunculus acris) received its specific 
name from Linnaeus, on account of its possessing the 
vesicatory principle in a great degree. Cattle generally 
refuse this plant; but if they eat it, it will blister their 
mouths. Instances are common in which the wanderer in 
the meadow has lain down to sleep with a handful of these 
