BEHEN. 
diffused as to be common house-plants, in the 
workshop and the cottage, as well as in the villa 
and the mansion, in company with the hydrangea, 
the fuschia, and the pelargonium. All are ever- 
greens, and have a tender habit, but admit of 
easy cultivation, and can be maintained in bloom 
during a large portion of the year. One, the 
plane-tree-leaved, is a shrub of about 10 feet in 
height; one, the climbing species, is a twiner of 
two feet in height; about one-half are under- 
shrubs of from 1 foot to 34 feet in height ; and 
the others are either herbaceous or tuberous 
rooted plants, of from 6 inches to two feet in 
height. The largest of three divisions of them 
have unequally cordate leaves; the next division 
have semicordate leaves; and the smallest divi- 
sion have roundish, ovate, or palmate leaves. 
The stems of all are succulent; the stipules of 
all are membranaceous and highly developed; 
the leaves of all are fleshy, very large, and often 
richly coloured with crimson ; and the flowers of 
all grow in fur-flowered panicles, and have a very 
neat appearance,—and those of most are white, 
of a few are pink, and of two are of a rosy colour. 
Though all the species are hothouse plants, the 
only requisites for their cultivation in any in- 
habited house are a potful of old tan or other 
_ vegetable matter, plenty of heat, and frequent 
and very copious waterings. A collection of them 
fills a hothouse in the imperial gardens at Schon- 
brunn, and is quite as fascinating as similar ad- 
jacent collections of ferns and palms. The spe- 
cies longest known in Britain are those designated 
nitida, reniformis, hirsuta, humilis, and acumin- 
ata ; and some of the species most recently intro- 
duced are those designated fagifolva, castaneifolra, 
Dregit, Meyerii, acerifolia, heracleifolia, and san- 
guinea. . 
BEHEN. Several plants of widely different 
character. One hehen is a species of catch-fly, a 
hardy annual, a native of Crete, producing a white 
flower in June and July,— Silene behen. An- 
other behen is a species of saw-wort, or centaury, 
a hardy ornamental biennial from the Levant, 
producing yellow flowers in July and August,— 
Serratula behen, or Centaurea behen. A third behen 
is the common sea-lavender or marsh wild beet, 
an evergreen herb, growing wild on muddy sea- 
shores in England, having a height of about a 
foot, bearing a pretty blue flower from May till 
August, and prized by the inhabitants of the 
Hssex coast as a medicine,— Statice Limonium. 
And a fourth behen is a species of chickweed, 
sometimes called the spattling-poppy, growing 
wild in pastures and corn-fields, and by the sides 
of roads in Britain, having a round, thick, whitish 
stem of about two feet in height, broad, oblong, 
bluish-green leaves, bearing a white flower from 
May till August, and occupying a place, though 
both an obscure and a doubtful one, among the 
materia medica of herbalists. 
BELLADONNA, or Drapiy Nigursuapr,— 
botanically A tropa Belladonna. A very poisonous, 
BELLADONNA. 
perennial, British plant, of the tribe Solanee. Its 
root is thick, fleshy, and creeping; its stems are 
annual, erect, herbaceous, purple-coloured, round, 
branching, leafy, somewhat fleshy, and about 
four or five feet high; its leaves are lateral, in 
pairs of unequal size, ovate, pointed, entire, soft 
and fatty to the touch, of a dusky green colour 
above, of a paler green below, and changing to 
purple in autumn; its flowers are solitary, large, 
drooping, bell-shaped, of a lurid hue without, of 
a dusky or brownish violet within, of a faint nar- 
cotic odour, and bloom in June and July; and 
the fruit or berry is large, roundish, smooth, 
shining, longitudinally furrowed on each side, 
first green in colour, but ripening into a shining 
black or deep purple, and containing many small 
kidney-shaped seeds, and a sweetish, semi-nause- 
ous, violet-coloured juice. This plant grows wild 
amongst rubbish in many parts of Great Britain, 
and is exceedingly dangerous to persons unac- 
quainted with its properties, and especially to 
children. Buchanan, in his History of Scotland, 
says that the Danish army of Sweno were de- 
stroyed by means of the juice of belladonna be- 
ing mixed with a donation of wine and ale which 
the Scotch, under Macbeth, sent to them during 
a truce; the Danes becoming stupified by the 
drink, and the Scotch falling upon them and 
killing them while they were in a state of stupe- 
faction. The beautiful appearance of the berries 
often induces children and ignorant adults to 
taste them; and their sweetish gout tempts some 
persons to eat a sufficient quantity to produce | 
The leaves, as | 
well as the berries, possess the active properties 
dangerous or fatal consequences. 
of the plant; they are inodorous, and have a 
sweetish, subacrid, and slightly nauseous taste ; 
and they do not lose their active properties by © 
41] 
drying. The seeds, however, contain the largest | 
proportion of the active properties. 
The effects produced on the human system by | 
belladonna are intoxication, violent gesticulation, | 
obstreperous and maniacal laughter, excessive | 
thirst, difficulty of deglutition, nausea, tumefac- | 
tion of the face, delirium, inflammation of the 
stomach, paralysis of the intestines, convulsions, 
and death. The poisonous parts of the plant 
have been ascertained by chemical analyses to | 
contain an element resembling animal albumen, 
alkaline salts with a base of potash, and especially 
a peculiar, bitter, alkaloidal, narcotic substance, 
which has been designated atropia. 
belladonna; but, according to the successful 
treatment hitherto practised, the antidotes are 
first emetics of sulphate of zinc or sulphate of 
copper, next purgatives and glysters, and next 
large doses of vinegar and other vegetable acids. 
Belladonna is administered to the human subject, 
in minute doses, by ordinary pharmaceutists, as 
a diuretic, a diaphoretic, and a narcotic, and in 
extremely minute doses, by homceopathist physi- 
According | 
to some experiments of M. Runge, lime-water | 
ought to be the proper antidote for poisoning by | 
