flowers and buttercups; but the cows know
better than to eat them. The poisonous
principle in buttercups is volatile, and disappears
out of the herb in drying. Buttercups, therefore,
are not only harmless when mixed with
the grass in making hay, but even help to
make the fodder nutritive by the large quantity
of mucilage their stems contain.

The wild anemones, which belong also to
the crowfoot tribe, are poisonous, and so is
monkshood, or wolf's-bane, as by this time
we have reason enough to know. Every
part of this last-named herb is poisonous,
and because its young leaves are like parsley,
and its old root is like horse-radish, many
have eaten it and died. It ought never to
be planted for the sake of its bright flowers
in the same bed with any sort of kitchen
herbs.

The stinking hellebore, bear's foot, or
setterwort, the green hellebore, and the black
hellebore, or Christmas rose, produce vomiting,
purging, burning pain, convulsions,
death. They will tempt nobody to eat them
for pleasure, but hellebore is used in the
country for worm medicines by many a well-
meaning quack; and, says Dr. Taylor, "if
persons are not always killed by such worm
medicines, it must be a very fortunate
circumstance."

The effect of poppies is well known. It
is the large white garden poppy, from the
seed-vessel of which opium is obtained:
there is but little opium in the red poppies
of the roadside and the field; enough,
however, to do mischief. The common celandine
is violently irritant, and it may poison people.
On one occasion, a town servant removed to
the country, garnished dishes with its young
curled leaves instead of parsley.

It may be thought that we are safe among
legumes, but we are not. We may eat beans
and peas. but we had better avoid eating
laburnum. The poisonous principle of the
laburnum, cytisine, is contained in some
other leguminous plants. In the laburnum
it kills easily. Three little girls in Herefordshire,
finding that a high wind had shaken
down a great many laburnum pods, collected
them in play, and ate the seeds as peas.
They were children of from five to seven
years old. Two died the same night in
convulsions; the third recovered, only after a
lingering illness of some months. There is
much poison also in laburnum bark. The
seeds of the yellow and of the rough-podded
vetchling may produce headache and sickness.

The wild flower of the cucumber tribe,
common in England, the bryony, is a powerful
and highly irritant purgative. It is a
quack herb medicine; its red berries produce
very ill effects on children who may chance
to eat them.

In the parsley tribe there are some familiar
wild flowers, very apt to be eaten, and very
far from eatable. Carrots and parsnips, celery
and fennel, belong to this family, and they are
good to eat, of course; but, there are other
plants of the kind which careless people may
mistake for parsley, celery, or parsnip, and
die of the blunder. Hemlock-leaves have
been eaten for parsley-leaves, although much
darker and more glossy. Cows and goats
will not eat hemlock, but sheep eat it
unharmed. It kills man, when taken in a fatal
dose, by its strong action on the nerves,
producing insensibility and palsy of the arms
and legs. As a drug, it is most dangerous,
except in skilful hands.

Then there is fools' parsley. A child of
five years old has been poisoned by eating
the somewhat bulbous roots of this plant, by
mistake for young turnips. She died within
an hour. Somebody put the leaves into
soup instead of parsley. Vomiting followed,
with at last lockjaw; death within twenty-
four hours. The roots of water-hemlock or
cowbane have been eaten by children, for
parsnips, with death as the consequence.
But, the most virulent of all the poisons of
this sort is the water-dropwort, common on
the banks of the Thames. When not in
flower it resembles celery, and the roots may
be mistaken easily for parsnip-roots. Some
years ago, a number of convicts were at work
upon the river bank, near Woolwich, and
found a quantity of this plant. Seventeen of
them ate it. Nine, shortly afterwards, went
into convulsions; one died in five minutes;
another in a quarter-of-an-hour; a third in
an hour; and a fourth a few minutes later.
Two others died in the course of a few days.
The fine-leaved water-dropwort and the
common dropwort are less poisonous, but
not to be eaten without considerable danger.

Now we come to the potato family; even
the potato itself, when the roots are exposed
to air and light, developing much of the
active principle and little of the starch, may
kill and has killed the person eating it. The
leaves and stem, too, are narcotic always, and
still more the berries. But, the tobacco is, of
this family, safer to smoke than eat; a very
little of it eaten has sufficed to destroy life.
The deadly nighshade, too, is a fair lady to
be shunned; the

Belladonna with false-painted fruits
Alluring to destroy.

A very small number of the dark purple
nighshade berries, fair to the eye and sweet
to the taste, will kill a child. It is on record
that only half a berry has sometimes proved
fatal. The root and leaves are not less
deadly than the berries. Ten years ago, some
of these nightshade berries were in ignorance
hawked about London streets for fruit. Two
persons died in consequence, and others had
narrow escapes. The bitter-sweet or woody
nightshade, so abundant in our hedges, has
also to be avoided; and the black or garden
nightshade has proved fatal to several.

Henbane is not uncommon in some parts