*7 
From the Bulletins we extract the following notes as especially 
interesting to our readers here. 
On poisonous fodder plants. — Among those investigated were 
the beans of Pkaseolus lunatus , commonly known as Lima beans. 
These beans are cultivated all over the world and form an important 
item in the food of the Brazilians. In a wild state the plant “ pro- 
duces seeds which vary in colour from light brown to deep purple 
while' under partial cultivation the seeds are usually light brown or 
pink with a few purple spots and when thoroughly cultivated they 
become much larger and the colour changes to a pale cream tint, 
coincident with these changes of colour in the seed coat the toxi- 
city of the seeds decreases with cultivation. In Mauritius the plant 
is grown practically wild for use as a green manure. ” The seeds 
are markedly poisonous and great care is taken to prevent cattle 
from eating them. In India, Rurmah and live Straits Settlements 
and other Tropical countries where Plutseolus lunatus is partiallv 
cultivated the pink or light brown seeds are commonly eaten but 
cases of poisoning by such seeds have been recorded and attention 
has been called to the necessity of using only light coloured seeds 
and rejecting as possibly poisonous those bearing much of the pur- 
ple colouration. In the case of the white seeds, no cases of poison- 
ing have been recorded. 
The poison produced by the seed is prussic acid, and this does 
not exist as prussic acid in the seed in its ordinary state. The 
beans contain a glucoside Phaseo-lunatin and an enzyme (un- 
organised ferment) and when the beans are crushed and moistened 
with water the enzyme decomposes the glucoside which breaks up 
into glucose, acetone and prussic acid. In the very light brown 
seeds *04 per cent, of prussic acid was found and in the deep purple 
seeds as much as *08 per cent. 
A case of poisoning by Mauritius beans occurred in Province 
Wellesley some years ago'. These beans had been introduced for 
green-soiling the Sugar canes and some Tamils gathered a quan- 
tity of them as well as those of Mucuna pruriens var utilis and 
made a bean-curry of them. It was noticed that the beans were 
bitter (a fact recorded also in the Bulletin of the Imperial Institute). 
The results were disastrous, three persons being killed. It was 
doubtful at the time which of the two kinds of beans was the 
poisonous one hut there is now I think little doubt that it was the 
Mauritius green-soiling bean. Thus in estates where this plant is 
used for manuring the natives should be warned that the beans of 
the plant are dangerous. I append Dr. Foston’s report on this 
case. 
Sung ei Bah at, 
Province Wellesley, 
22nd February , iSqq . 
Sir, — On the evening of the rqth February, live persons were 
attacked with symptoms of acute poisoning after eating some cooker] 
