FOOD OF PLANTS. 
523 
Toynbee and Fayrer have also recently mentioned cases of 
poisoning by pork, in which no metallic substance capable of 
explaining the symptoms could be found. 
Finally, a great number of authors, amongst w r hom w*e 
may mention Sengbusch, Lichtenstadt, Fayrer, Galiay, 
Jameson, Simon, Edwards, Zenker, Jaehnichen, West- 
rumb, Combe, &c., mention numerous cases of poisoning 
produced by cheese, musty fats, ham and salted meats, or 
fish. 
These last cases have been particularly observed in Russia, 
ow : ing to the use of salted or smoked fish of the genus Huso , 
w r hich were eaten raw^ in large quantities. 
Several observations of this kind may also be found in the 
works of Autenrieth; and the c Treatises on Toxicology ^ of 
Orfila and Dr. Christison, contain a good number of them. 
In the last place, MM. Chevallier and Duchesne have col¬ 
lected, in the Annales cVHygiene, a host of analogous cases. 
In all these circumstances, the identity of the conditions 
w T hich occasion the production of the poison in these differ¬ 
ent nitrogenous substances, the similarity of the disorders 
w r hich are produced in the economy, together with the in¬ 
variably negative results of analysis, all these concordant 
data permit us, w r e think, to refer these poisonings to the 
same origin as that which communicates to decayed sausages 
their poisonous properties. 
Dr. Kriigelstein had, moreover, already observed that the 
poisonous principle of salted fish gives rise to symptoms 
quite similar to those determined by the sausage poison. 
We may remark besides, that, in most of the cases which 
we have just mentioned the investigator has noticed, but 
without, how r ever, suspecting it to contain the cause of the 
poisonings, the development of abundant mouldiness, or a 
peculiar state of alteration differing from putridity .—Journal 
de Chimie Medicale. 
THE FOOD OF PLANTS. 
The ancients inquired, by very laborious researches, into 
the nature of vegetable growth; but the results were very 
unsatisfactory. The transmutation of air into the different 
bodies was held as an undoubted truth by Epicurus and 
Pythagoras; and Lucretius, in the beautiful poem, 4 De 
Rerum Natura/ affirms the constant change of air into 
other substances w T hich are resolved into air, and which is 
again decomposed into bodie by a continual and never- 
