Stereo Copyright, Underwood & UnderwoodLondon and New YorkThe Felling of Giant Trees in CaliforniaThese sequoias grow to from 250 to 400 feet high, though they are not quite the tallest trees in the world.(See page47.)
Stereo Copyright, Underwood & UnderwoodLondon and New YorkThe Felling of Giant Trees in CaliforniaThese sequoias grow to from 250 to 400 feet high, though they are not quite the tallest trees in the world.(See page47.)
Stereo Copyright, Underwood & UnderwoodLondon and New York
The Felling of Giant Trees in California
These sequoias grow to from 250 to 400 feet high, though they are not quite the tallest trees in the world.
(See page47.)
In Switzerland, in those valleys in which the glaciers aremelting away, leaving stretches of bare mud, scratched stones, and polished rock, plants immediately begin to settle there. A Swiss botanist watched the process during five or six years, and describes how first the yellow Saxifrage (S. aizoides) establishes itself. Next season Coltsfoot, willow-herb, Oxyria, and two grasses had planted themselves. During the third season another grass came in. By the fourth season, Fescues and yarrow had appeared, and by the fifth season, five grasses, clovers, and yarrow had formed a regular grassland upon the new untouched soil.[104]
In such cases, Nature, who abhors bare ground, is endeavouring to clothe it with useful vegetation.
The fights which are going on are of the most ruthless character. Many weeds are said to produce some 30,000 seeds in one year, and every plant which grows in a meadow is scattering thousands of seeds. But of course the number of plants remains much the same, so that 29,999 seeds are wasted (or the seedlings choked out) for every one that grows up!
It is probably because of this perpetual warfare that the growth of the grasses is so vigorous, and their whole structure so perfectly adapted. If you watch a flowering grass, you are sure to notice how narrow is its stem compared with the height. A factory chimney only fifty-eight feet high requires to be at least four feet broad at the base, yet a ryeplant 1500 millimetres high may be only three millimetres broad near the root. Man's handiwork, the chimney, is in height seventeen times its diameter, but the height of the grass is 500 times its diameter.
The neatness of design, the graceful curves and perfect balance in the little flowering branches at the top of ahaulm, is always worth looking at, and particularly in the early morning when it is beset with sparkling drops of dew.
It is all wiry, bending and swaying to the wind so as to produce those waves which roll across a hay-field, and on which the shimmering light is reflected and changes colour. The fight for light and air, the struggle to get their heads up above their competitors, produces all this exquisite mechanism.
It is true that a heavy rainstorm may beat the stems flat down to the ground, but, as soon as the weather becomes dry again these same stems will raise themselves up and become upright; they have a special sensitiveness and a special kind of growth which enables them to do this.
There are two special dangers which all such artificial meadows have to withstand. Let us see what will happen if such a meadow begins to dry up through a sinking of the level of the water below the soil.
Each grass has its own special favourite amount of moisture. It likes to have its water at just one particular depth below the surface. Unfortunately there are not nearly enough sympathetic and careful observations of the preferences of each individual grass. A Danish author has worked out the facts in certain localities (Geest). Suppose first that the water-level of the wells, etc., is 6-1/2 to 9-3/4 feet below the surface. This suits the Meadow Poa grass (Poa pratensis) exactly. It will grow luxuriantly and flourish. Now suppose the weather is very wet, so that the water rises in the wells till they are three to four feet deep. The Roughish Poa (P. trivialis) prefers this moister soil, and it will grow so vigorously that it will kill out the other kind. If it is a season of very heavy floods, or if the drains become choked so that the water rises to within fourteen to twenty-fiveinches of the surface, then the tufted Aira (Deschampsia caespitosa) will kill out the other kinds and flourish abundantly. But if the water rises higher than this the marsh series comes in (see Chap.XVI.).
So that the thirsty grasses of the meadow are helped or hindered in their fight for life by changes in the water away down in the soil below their roots.
Even in Great Britain one can see distinct differences in very dry and very wet summers, but all these pastures, meadowlands, and hay-fields are, as we have already mentioned, as much due to man's forethought and industry as a factory or coal-mine.
It is very difficult to realize this. The best way is to go to the National, or any other good picture-gallery, and look carefully at any landscapes painted before the year 1805. You will scarcely believe that the country as painted can be the land we know. Where is the "awful orderliness" of England? Where are the trim hedges? Where are the tidy roadsides and beautifully embanked rivers that we see to-day?
As a matter of fact, until the great Macadam made good roads and the great Telford and other engineers built stone bridges, it was impossible to rely on getting about with carts and carriages. Gentlemen's coaches and wagons used to be literally stuck in the mud! Horses were drowned at fords, or died in their struggles to pull very light loads through mud which nearly reached the axles of the wheels (see Chap.XI.).
Besides the change due to roads, fences, drains, and farm buildings, the very grasses themselves are growing unnaturally. The farmer has selected and sown what he thinks best.
He is obliged to do so, because grasses vary so much. Some of them shoot up quickly and die after the first year. Others live for two years, whilst a great many bide their time, developing very slowly, and not reaching their full growth until the fourth or fifth year.
Some are tall and vigorous, others are short; some flower early in the season, and others very late. Many send out quantities of suckers or runners at the base, so that they form a dense, intricate turf—a mass of stems and roots thickly covering the ground.
A farmer wants his pasture to begin early and to continue late; he must have a good first year's crop, and it must remain good for years afterwards. So that his calculations as regards the proportions of the different grass seeds which he requires are of the most abstruse character.
To sow such "permanent pasture," prepared by blending together grasses and clovers with an eye to all the above necessities, there will be needed some seven million seeds for every acre.
The art consists in coaxing the good, lasting, nutritious ones to make both tall hay, rich aftermath, and a close, thick turf below, and, until these are ready, to use the annual and biennial grasses.
Such beautifully shaven, green, soft turf as one sees in the lawns of cathedrals or the "quads" at Oxford and Cambridge has been most carefully and regularly watered, rolled, and mown for hundreds of years. It is not easy to keep even a tennis-lawn in good condition. Little tufts of daisies appear. Their leaves lie so flat that they escape the teeth of the mower, and they are not so liable to be injured by tennis-shoes as the tiny upright grass-shoots which are trying to spring up everywhere. The Plantain is evenworse, for it is specially built to stand heavy weights, and it has several roots which divide and branch like the prongs which fix teeth in the jaw, so that it is very difficult to howk it out.
Thus our grasslands in Britain are unnatural and artificial productions. If the field drains are choked, moss or fog and rushes appear. Still more interesting, however, is what happens if the farmer is not careful to destroy the taller weeds, such as Dock, Ragweed, Cow Parsnip, Thistles, and the like. If you walk over a grass-field in early spring, you are sure to see some of these pests. At this stage they have a very humble, weak, and innocent appearance: they are quite small rosettes or tufts. Yet they are crowded with leaves, which are hard at work busily manufacturing food material. Soon they begin to shoot up. Their leaves overreach all the neighbouring grasses. Their roots spread in every direction, taking what ought to go to the "good green herb intended for the service of man." They finally accomplish their wickedness by producing thousands of seeds, which are scattered broadcast over the fields.
By this time the farmer sees what is going on, and endeavours to cut them down; but it is a long, slow, and laborious proceeding. One year's seeding means seven years' weeding.
Yet these tall Thistles and Ragweeds are only the first stage of a very interesting invasion. Look around the field corners, on railway-banks, or in old quarries, where man has left things alone. You will see these same tall herbs (the Ragweed, etc.), but you are sure to find a place where they are being suppressed by Rasps, Briers, and Brambles. These are taller, stronger, and more vigorous than the herbs, and they also last longer, for their leaves are still atwork in November. This is the second stage of the invasion. But if the place has been long neglected, Hawthorns and Rowans, Birch and Ash will be found growing up. These last show what is happening.
A wood is trying to grow up on the grassland. If left alone, an oak or beech forest would, after many years, spread over all our grass pastures and hay-fields. These tall herbs are the pioneers, and the briers and brambles are its advanced guard.
As a matter of fact, by far the greatest part of our agricultural landwasa forest, but it has been cut down, drained, dug, weeded, hedged, and "huzzed and maazed" with agricultural implements and more or less scientifically selected manures, until it is made to yield good beef, excellent mutton, and almost the largest crops per acre in the world.
Natural grasslands exist, however, in every continent.
The great Steppes of Southern Russia and the pastures that extend far to the eastward even to the very borders of China, the Prairies of North America, the Pampas of Argentina, the great sheep-farms of Australia, and a large proportion of South Africa, consist of wide, treeless, grassy plains, where forests only occur along the banks of rivers, in narrow hill-valleys, or upon mountains of considerable altitude. Upon these great plateaux or undulating hills the rainfall, though it is but small in amount, is equally distributed, so that there is no lengthy and arid dry season. Take the American Prairie, for instance. These valuable lands, once the home of unnumbered bison and hordes of antelopes, lie between the ancient forests of the eastern states and the half-deserts and true salt deserts of the extreme west. Rivers, accompanied in their windings byriverside forests, are found (especially in the east). The real prairie has a blackish, loamy soil, covered sometimes by the rich Buffalo or Mesquite grass, which forms a short, velvety covering, not exactly a turf such as we find in England, but still true grassland. It is only green in early spring.
A Bushman Digging up Elephant's FootThe Bushman is levering up the root of elephant's foot to get the starchy food inside. He does it by a stick run through a rounded stone. The woman has caught a lizard for the boy to eat.
A Bushman Digging up Elephant's FootThe Bushman is levering up the root of elephant's foot to get the starchy food inside. He does it by a stick run through a rounded stone. The woman has caught a lizard for the boy to eat.
A Bushman Digging up Elephant's Foot
The Bushman is levering up the root of elephant's foot to get the starchy food inside. He does it by a stick run through a rounded stone. The woman has caught a lizard for the boy to eat.
From the spring onwards until the end of summer there is an endless succession of flowers. The first spring blossoms appear in April; great stretches are covered with Pentstemons, Cypripediums, and many others in May and June; then follow tall, herbaceous Phloxes, Lilies, and Asclepiads, but perhaps the most characteristic flora blossoms still later on, when every one "wants to be in Kansas when the Sunflowers bloom." Over these prairies used to travel the great wagons or "prairie schooners." The cowboy, who almost lives on horseback, watches over great herds of cattle and troops of half-wild horses. Yet his life is, or used to be, almost as free, comfortless, and uncivilized as that of the buffalo-hunting Indian who preceded him. One must not forget to mention the prairie-dog—able to utilize the abundant grass, and diving into a safe refuge underground when threatened by the wolves or other carnivorous creatures, which, of course, multiplied exceedingly, thanks to the jack-hare, antelopes, and bisons.
The Pampas in South America is a similar grassland. On the east it stops at the woodlands along the great Plate River, but on the west it becomes gradually more dry and arid, until long before the Andes are reached it is too dry even to carry sheep, and can only be described as a half-desert.
"It is a boundless sea of grasses fading into the distant horizon, which can only be distinguished when the sun isrising or setting." Yet amongst the grasses are hundreds of flowers, and, a fact which is very remarkable, many of them, such as Fennel, Artichoke, Milk Thistle, Burdock, Rye Grass, etc., are European plants which have dispossessed the natives over miles of country, exactly as the gaucho has driven away or exterminated the Indians who lived there. It is covered by tufts of grass betwixt which appears the rich alluvial earth, yet in good years it may become almost a perfect grass floor. "The colour changes greatly, for in spring when the old grass is burnt off, it is coal-black, which changes to a bright blue-green as soon as the young leaves appear; later on it becomes brownish green, which again changes when the silver-white flowers come out to the appearance of a rolling, waving sea of shining silver."
Here would be the place to mention how an army encamped upon the Pampas finds itself next morning imprisoned and doomed to perish miserably in a forest of giant thistles which has sprung up during the night. There is no doubt that thistles and other weeds are very tall in both South and North America. Fennels are ten to twelve feet high, and even little Chenopodiums (such as in England may reach eighteen inches), become in South America seven to eight feet high, but the tallness of some of the stories is more remarkable even than that of the plants!
Over the Pampas used to roam thousands of guanacos (a creature of the most unlovely type, which resembles both a camel, a mule, a deer, and a horse); here also were Darwin's ostriches (Rhea Darwinii) and other game, which were caught by the lasso and by the peculiar "bolas" of the Indians. They used to surround the herds and then massacre them by hundreds. The "tuco tuco" also, which is a burrowing rodent with habits very like those of the prairiedog, finds plenty of sustenance in the abundant grasses. Upon them subsist pumas, foxes, and other carnivores.
We have said that the Pampas gradually changes from being very fertile on the east to being almost a desert on the west. Here is the place to mention a very interesting, if not romantic, fact. The guanaco doesnottravel hundreds of miles in order to die in one particular spot as soon as it feels ill, but it does resort especially to certain spots. There the grass is often a bright, fresh green, for it is plentifully manured, and consequently the guanaco helps to encourage the good grasses to occupy a half-desert. On the eastern side of the Pampas great changes are beginning to appear. The owners of the great camps, haciendas or cattle-ranches let off small parts of their land to Italian "colonists." These people grow crops of Indian corn, and when that has been reaped, the valuable Alfalfa or Lucerne is sown down. This forms the most exquisite and valuable pasture, and consequently far more Shorthorn and Durham cattle can be maintained.
There are in South Africa enormous grassy plains, where once springbok and other game used to exist in enormous herds (Wangeman records having seen a herd of antelope four miles long), in spite of lions and other beasts of prey, and in spite also of the Boer, who was as much a horseman as the gaucho or Red Indian. The great buck wagons of South Africa were almost as much the real homes of the Boers as the two-roomed huts which make up his "farms."
The great Steppes of Russia and Siberia are also grasslands. "As seen from a distance hills covered by the Stipa grass resemble sand-hills, but, when nearer at hand, the sand-grey colour changes into a silvery white, and these ever-movinggrasses remind one of the waves of the ocean and, in spite of their monotony, leave a pleasant impression."[105]
Tulips, Hyacinths, Veronicas, Periwinkles, Scotch Thistles, Euphorbias, Wormwoods, and other of our common plants or their near cousins, make up most of the flora of the Steppes. Yet there are hundreds of others, for it is a vegetation very rich in species.
If one reads in Gibbon's stately language of the mode of life of the Huns, the Scythians, and those other barbarians who, originating in these huge grasslands, occasionally overflowed and overwhelmed the civilization of declining Rome, the resemblance to Red Indians, Pampas Indians, cowboys, gauchos, and Boers is not a little striking.
Read, for instance, the magnificent account of the great hunting matches of the Tartar princes. "A circle is drawn of many miles in circumference, to encompass the game of an extensive district; and the troops that form the circle regularly advance towards a common centre, where the animals, surrounded on every side, are abandoned to the darts of the hunters." Both the Red Indians of the Prairie and the savages of the Pampas used to surround and destroy the game in exactly the same way.
The unfortunate Chinese princess given over for political advantages to a prince of the Huns, "laments that she had been condemned by her parents to a distant exile, under a barbarian husband, and complains that sour milk was her only drink, raw flesh her only food, a tent her only palace." This describes exactly the ordinary life and home of the Huns. "The Scythians of every age have been celebrated as bold and skilful riders; and constant practice had seated them so firmly on horseback, that they were supposed bystrangers to perform the ordinary duties of civil life—to eat, to drink, and even to sleep—without dismounting from their steeds." Red Indians of Pampas and Prairie, cowboy and gaucho, lived exactly in the same way.
In those pages of Gibbon which treat of the Huns, Scythians, and other hordes, one recognizes sometimes the wagon of the Boers; sometimes a migration of the East African Masai; then perhaps it is a weapon that is really the lasso, or a disposition and character exactly paralleled by the Crows and Blackfeet. Even the great grass plains of Australia, where the kangaroo, the wallaby, and the dingo have been replaced by the sheep and the "Waler" horse, one finds, in the shepherd and squatter, traits that remind one of the gaucho or the cowboy.
Nor is this in the least extraordinary, for when a scanty rainfall produces those great limitless rolling seas of grass, Nature provides first large herbivorous animals to eat it down as well as carnivorous beasts to keep their numbers in control, until such time as a race of horsemen appears, whose domestic cattle replace the bisons, guanacos, kangaroos, and antelopes, and so assist in replenishing and subduing the earth.
Poisoned arrows—Fish poisons—Manchineel—Curare—A wonderful story—Antiaris—Ordeals—The Obi poison—Oracles produced by poisons—Plants which make horses crazy and others that remove their hair—Australian sheep and the Caustic Creeper—Swelled head—Madness by the Darling Pea—Wild and tame animals, how they know poisons—How do they tell one another?—The Yew tree, when is it, and when is it not poisonous?
EVEN to-day all embryo chemists and doctors are required to "pass" in the recognition of the more important medicinal plants.
But their knowledge is probably very superficial as compared with that of a bushman in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa. Every man, woman, and child in such a tribe knows thoroughly every plant that grows in the neighbourhood. His diet is a varied one, for it includes maggots, fish, frogs, snakes, white ants, and other horrible ingredients, but he lives mainly on roots, bulbs, and herbs of sorts. In times of famine he has had to obtain the most intimate knowledge possible of many plants, that namely which is obtained by eating them, and he has most carefully observed the poisonous kinds. These latter have given him, too, a very powerful weapon, for it is the poisoned arrows which give him the chance of killing game, otherwise utterly beyond his reach. He is on the fair road to becoming ahunter and tribesman, instead of being only a member of a morose, outcast family, always wandering and always hungry.
Probably poisons were first used in fishing. Many vegetable drugs, when thrown into pools and lakes, have the property of stupefying or killing the fish. A great many of these fish poisons are known, and it is quite easy to use them.
Amongst the Dyaks of Borneo, screens of basketwork are placed along a stream to prevent the fish escaping. Then the Dyaks collect along either bank in their canoes. Everybody has a supply of the root of the tubai (Menispermum sp.), which they hammer with stones in the water inside the canoe, so as to extract the poison. At a given signal the poisonous stuff is baled into the river, and very soon afterwards a scene of wild excitement begins, for the fish are speared or captured with handnets as they rise, stupefied, to the surface. The women scoop up the small fry in their nets.[106]
Even at the Sea of Galilee, Tristram mentions that Arabs sometimes obtain their fish by poisoned bread-crumbs. In the South Sea Islands, at Tahiti, a poison is obtained from the nuts of a kind of Betonica, and is used to catch the fish among the reefs near shore.[107]In West Africa several fish poisons are in use (e.g. seeds ofTephrosia Vogelii), and probably the same methods are used almost everywhere. They are by no means extinct even at home, for the occasional poacher sometimes uses fish poisons.
Arrow poison is, however, much more important, and is used by a great number of tribes in almost every part of theworld. In 1859, in a war with the Dyaks of Borneo, the English army lost thirty men by poisoned arrows. They are deadly weapons, for the dart is a very thin piece of reed or cane, which has been dipped in the Upas poison (Antiaris toxicaria). It is propelled from a blow pipe, which in practised hands is able to carry 250 feet. One or two of these darts may cause death in two hours' time. The Spaniards, in their conquest of the West Indian islands, were often defeated by the poisoned arrows of the Caribs. The wounded died in agonies of suffering and delirium, sometimes protracted for twenty-four hours after receiving the wound.
The poison in this case is supposed to have been the Manchineel (Hippomane).
It is a handsome tree, but a very dangerous one, for the slightest cut on the surface produces a flow of a very fine white milk which is acrid and poisonous. This juice produces temporary or total blindness if the slightest speck enters the eyes, or even if one sits over a fire made of its wood. It is probably not true that people are killed if they merely sleep below it, and grass will probably grow quite well under its shade, although there are stories which deny this. Blowpipes and poisoned darts are used by many savages in Asia and South America. Perhaps the Curare or Woorali poison is the most wonderful of the South American kinds. The tree,Strychnos sp., grows along the Amazon and in the Guianas. The poison is obtained from the wood and bark, and several other vegetable substances are mixed with it. (This is a very common feature of native drugs and increases the chances of doingsomething.) It is a blood poison, and a very deadly one. Large animals like the tapir stagger about, collapse, and die after a very few steps, if they have been wounded by a dart. Humboldt declaresthat the earth-eating Otomaks were able to kill their antagonists by the mere pressure of their poisoned thumbnails.
In Africa it is more usual to find poisoned arrows shot from a bow. The exquisitely beautiful seed ofStrophanthus Kombeis used as an arrow poison. The plant is a climber found in forests or bush, and has large woody pods about seven to twelve inches long. When these are open, the inside is seen to be full of the small yellowish seeds; each ends in a fine awn three to four inches long, which carries at the end a beautiful tuft of the finest silky hairs. The seed-coat is also covered with silk hairs. When viewed against a black surface, there is no more lovely object in nature. Yet from the seed-coat a very deadly poison is obtained; probably snake-venom and various gluey substances form part of the mixture, which is daubed on the arrows. Dr. Kolbe saw the Hottentots plastering their arrows with the poison of the hooded snake. Bushmen use a Lily bulb,Haemanthus toxicarius, but sometimes add part of the inside of a small caterpillar.
Another African poison which is not so well known is theAcokanthera, which was the ingredient in the arrows obtained by the writer in British East Africa.
North America is singularly free from these unsportsmanlike and horrible weapons, but they were not unknown in Europe in very ancient times. Pliny speaks of the Arabian pirates as poisoners, and allusions to their use of deadly arrows can be found in Horace, Ovid, and Homer. In theOdyssey, the hero goes to Ephyra (Epirus?) to purchase a deadly arrow poison, but he is refused for fear of the eternal gods. Poisoned arrows were employed by the Celts in Gaul, and also by the Saracens in the War of Granada in 1484.
Yet even in the time of Homer the sense of humanity seems to have decided against poisoned arrows as being both unnecessary and cruel, just as, in our own times, explosive bullets have been condemned, and are no longer used by civilized nations. But we should remember that until man became so expert with the bow and spear and so civilized by tribal fights as to be able to do without poisons, they were a very useful help in the struggle for civilization. Hundreds of thin pieces of bamboo about six inches long were regularly carried by certain African tribes. When dipped in poison and afterwards placed in paths in the ground, they formed a very efficient protection against barefooted enemies.
The Antiaris alluded to above is the famous Upas tree of Java. The tree wassaidto grow in a desert with not another living plant within ten miles of it. Such was the virulence of its poison that there were no fish in the waters. Neither rat, nor mouse, nor any other vermin had ever been seen there; and when any birds flew so near this tree that the effluvia reached them, they fell dead—a sacrifice to the effects of its poison. Out of a population of sixteen hundred persons who were compelled, on account of civil dissensions, to reside within twelve or fourteen miles of the tree, not more than three hundred remained alive in two months. Criminals condemned to die were offered the chance of life if they would go to the Upas tree and collect some of the poison. They were provided with masks (not unlike our modern motor-veils), and yet not two in twenty returned from the expedition.
All the foregoing statements were for years implicitly believed. They were vouched for by a Dutch surgeon resident in Java. Medicine is a profession, and Holland is acountry which would in no way lead one to expect such magnificent mendacious audacity!
For the whole of the preceding statements about Antiaris is pure romance. The inner bark of young trees, when made into coarse garments, produces an extremely painful itching, whilst the dried juice is a virulent arrow poison.
Hellebore and Aconite were the favourite poisons of the Marquise de Brinvilliers and other specialists of the Middle Ages. The Christmas Roses or Hellebores were known to be poisonous fourteen hundred years before the Christian era, and are still used in medicine. Aconite, which has a tuberous root-stock, is dangerous, for it is occasionally eaten in mistake for the horse-radish, to which it has a faint resemblance. All kinds of aconite are poisonous. That of one of the Indian species is used to tip the arrows employed in shooting tigers.
Trials by ordeal were very common in ancient times. The theory was that an innocent person was not injured by certain drugs, which, however, proved immediately fatal to the guilty.
Such trials at one time were customary in almost every part of the world. They were supposed to be perfectly just, so that no man could be held guilty of the death of those who succumbed. In practice, however, they were almost invariably corrupt. TheTanghinia veneniferaof Madagascar was regularly used in ordeals, and is probably still employed by certain tribes. The seeds are exceedingly poisonous, but, if the authorities wish the accused person to escape, a strong emetic is mixed with the powdered seeds, and the poison has no time to act. This, however, is seldom the case, for in any savage nation no one who is popular and in good esteem with the king or other people in authorityis at all likely to be accused. The fact of his being accused means in most cases that he is already condemned to die. Another ordeal plant is the Calabar Bean (Physostigma venenosa), found in West Africa. The plant is a climber belonging to theLeguminosæ, and the seeds, which are about an inch in diameter, are very deadly. The seed is conspicuously marked by the long, dark, sunken scar, where it was attached to the pod. Besides being exceedingly poisonous, it has also a curious effect upon the pupil of the eye, which is contracted by this drug.[108]
Another famous poison is produced fromDatura stramoniumand allied species. In tropical and sub-tropical countries, one is almost sure to find specimens of this handsome plant along almost every roadside. It is in fact one of the commonest tropical weeds. The leaves are large with fine spinose margins, and the flower is most conspicuous, as it is four or five inches long. This is supposed to be one of the drugs employed by the Obi wizards and witches. The most horrible rites, accompanied by atrocious cruelties, were performed amongst certain West African tribes and are continued amongst their descendants, the freed slaves of the West Indies and of the Southern United States.
Even to-day no white man is allowed to learn anything of the proceedings, but some form of devil-worship or Shamanism, accompanied by incantations and the use of poisonous drugs, still flourishes. Preparations of various sorts of Datura or Thorn-apple produce sometimes stupefaction, sometimes frantic, furious delirium, and sometimes death.
It is used in medicine as a narcotic and diuretic. Burton says that the Arabs smoke the leaves in pipes as a cure forinfluenza and asthma. It is sometimes used in Europe for neuralgia and even epilepsy. On the other hand, the priests of the ancient Peruvians used Datura to produce the ravings mistaken for inspiration, and it is supposed that the priests of Apollo at Delphi employed an allied species for the same purpose. In India, China, West Africa, and amongst the American blacks, it is still very commonly used.
A firm belief existed in the Middle Ages that every plant was a good remedy for something. There is a real basis in fact for this superstition, because every plant in the world has, so far as it can do so, to protect itself. The attacks of all sorts of grazing animals, from the mouse to the elephant, as well as the infinitely more dangerous and destructive insects, bacteria, and fungi, have to be provided for. By far the commonest form of protection is to develop within the plant strong medicinal or strongly smelling substances. These are far better as protective agents than the thorns and spines characteristic of deserts and half-deserts. We have already glanced at the turpentines and resins of Coniferous forests and at the odorous gums, frankincense, and myrrh of the Acacia scrub.
The use of poisons as protection is eminently characteristic of three of the natural orders. The Buttercups (Ranunculaceæ), the Potato order (Solanaceæ) and the Lilies. Of the first named, the celery-leaved, and indeed all Buttercups, are extremely poisonous; so also are all Aconites and Hellebores, as well as Marsh Marigold, Adonis, Clematis, and Larkspur.
Others, though not poisonous, are strongly medicinal, such as Blake Snakeroot, Hydrastis, etc. It is therefore inadvisable to use any of this order for food unless other people have eaten it without any inconvenience!
The beauty of the Lily order does not prevent it from being a particularly dangerous group of plants. Perhaps the worst poisons in this order are those of the Meadow Saffron (Colchicum autumnale), Herb Paris, Veratrum, Sabadilla, Lily of the Valley, Tulip, and Crown Imperial bulbs. Chamælirium, Trillium, Squills, Garlic, Solomon's Seal, Aloes, and the Sarsaparillas are all well-known medicines.
The orderSolanaceæis perhaps the most interesting, for it includes such dangerous poisons as Tobacco, Datura,Atropa belladonna(Deadly Nightshade), Henbane, Bittersweet (Solanum dulcamara), Common Nightshade (Solanum nigrum), and a very great many important drugs. Even the common potato contains a poisonous secretionsolanin, and it is dangerous to eat green potatoes or the foliage. Yet the Tomato or Love Apple (so called because it was supposed to excite tender feelings) is both nutritious and delicious. Chillies and Cayenne Pepper (Capsicum spp.) are also commonly used as condiments.
Such poisonous orders should of course be avoided, but much more dangerous are those deadly plants which appear as it were accidentally in orders which are amongst the most useful friends of man. Amongst the grasses there is the deadly Darnel (Lolium temulentum), a first cousin and not very unlike the very commonest and one of the most useful grasses—Rye Grass (Lolium perenne).
Then in the useful Carrot order, there are such dangerous and even deadly plants as Fool's Parsley, Water Dropwort, and Cowbane.Œnanthe crocata(Water Dropwort) is one of the very commonest marsh and ditch plants in Great Britain. It is perfectly well known to botanists as distinctly poisonous, yet in 1902 a veterinary surgeon brought me some of the tuberous roots to name, and told me that sixfine young cows were lying dead on a neighbouring farm through having eaten them!
A particularly useful order of plants (Leguminosæ), the Beans and Peas, contains a few poisonous species. It is said that in every year children are sure to be killed by eating the seeds of the Laburnum, and to this order belong also the Calabar Bean and Crab's Eyes. The last named is only fatal when introduced below the skin in small quantities. The seeds of the Bitter Vetch (Lathyrus sativus) produce paralysis of the legs in man and also in horses. The Crazy or Loco weed of North America is sometimes eaten by horses in the Western United States. The wretched animals stagger about as if intoxicated, and eventually die. Belonging to this same order is the Wild Tamarind, or Jumbai, of Jamaica (Leucæna glauca). It is a weedy-looking acacia, and extremely common in all tropical countries. Dr. D. Morris thus alludes to it:—[109]
"Mr. Robert Russell, of St. Ann's, informs me that horses feeding on the leaves of this plant completely lose the hair from their manes and tails. This ... statement was supported by the testimony of so many people acquainted with the facts that there was no reason to doubt it. Many years afterwards (in December, 1895), I renewed my acquaintance with the plant in the Bahamas. The plant was much more plentiful there than in Jamaica; it was, in fact, distinctly encouraged in the former islands as a fodder plant. The people were fully aware of the singular effect it produced on horses, and added that it also affected mules and donkeys. Its effect on pigs was still more marked. These animals assumed a completely naked condition, and appeared without a single hair on their body. Horses badly affected byJumbai were occasionally seen in the streets of Nassau, where they were known as 'cigar-tails.' Such depilated animals, although apparently healthy, were considerably depreciated in value. They were said to recover when fed exclusively on corn and grass. The new hair was, however, of a different colour and texture, 'so the animals were never quite the same.' One animal was cited as having lost its hoofs as well, and in consequence it had to be kept in slings until they grew again and hardened. The effects of the Jumbai on horses, mules, donkeys, and pigs were regarded as accidental—due to neglect or ignorance. The plant was really encouraged to supply food for cattle, sheep, and goats. The latter greedily devoured it and were not perceptibly affected by it. It will be noticed that the animals affected were non-ruminants, while those not affected were ruminants. The probable explanation is that the ruminants, by thoroughly mixing the food with saliva and slowly digesting it, were enabled to neutralize the action of the poison and escape injury. The seeds probably contain the deleterious principle in a greater degree than any other part of the plant. It was a common experience that animals introduced from other localities suffered more than the native animals. The latter were either immune or had learnt to avoid the plant as noxious to them."
That animals resident in a district are not poisoned by plants which are often fatal to sheep and cattle when on the march through it, has been often observed in Australia. The great "mobs" or droves of sheep passing slowly on their travels through the bush to a new district are often poisoned by the Caustic Creeper (Euphorbia Drummondi). "The head swells to an enormous extent, becoming so heavy that the animal cannot support it, and drags it along theground"; but this does not apparently happen to resident cattle. Similarly for the Darling Pea or Indigo (Swainsonia galegifolia). At one place this was growing abundantly where some travelling horses were hobbled for the night. "They had been on the road some nine weeks, and were up to this date caught without any difficulty. On this occasion ... their eyes were staring out of their heads, and they were prancing against trees and shrubs.... When driven they would suddenly stop, turn round and round, and keep throwing their heads up as if they had been hit under the jaw.... Two out of nine died, and five others had to be left at the camp."[110]
In other natural orders we find one or two dangerous plants amongst a whole series of perfectly harmless or useful forms. The Oleander, in the Olive order, Corncockle (Lychnis floscuculli), in the Pink order,Lactuca ScariolaamongstCompositæand others are all cases in point. So also is the Yew amongstConiferæ, etc.
How do animals recognize these particular plants as being dangerous whilst all their allies are harmless? But the reader will answer that they do not; it is well known that animalsarekilled by eating poisonous plants, therefore poison cannot possibly be any protection against animals.
This is one of those interesting questions in which the suppression of apparently irrelevant details produces confusion.
As a matter of fact, wild animals, or even domesticated animals in nearly a wild state, donoteat the poisonous plants of the country in which they and their forefathers have been brought up—that is provided that they are either adult or are accompanied by full-grown animals.Almost every case of cattle-poisoning in Great Britain occurs when young calves, foals, or lambs are turned loose in the fields without any mature older head amongst them. Sometimes valuable stable-bred animals are lost, especially by eating yew-leaves, but there are exceedingly few instances of full-grown cattle being caught in such foolishness. When cattle, horses, or sheep are turned loose in a new country, plenty of cases do occur, and it is possible that they might make mistakes with unknown foreign plants which had escaped into their pastures here.
But almost every case of poisoning, even of cattle, shows that it is young cattle who foolishly eat foxgloves, dropwort, buttercup, etc., and occasionally die thereby.
Wild animals, who are of course brought up by their mothers, never seem to be poisoned. They probably recognize the dangerous plant by colour, smell, or taste. As a matter of fact, many are rendered conspicuous by some lurid sort of colour, such as bright red or purple. There is a general garishness of appearance about many of them. Aconite, Foxglove, Herb Paris, Henbane, and Nightshades all show this peculiar appearance. In Java it is said that the natives keep away wild pigs by planting hedges of certain species with purplish-red leaves around their plantations.
Perhaps the most interesting point of all is that it seems to be quite justifiable to conclude that animals do, somehow, manage to tell their offspring and each other what they should and should not eat.
Youth, with its tendency to rash experiment, is thus kept in check by the mature experience of age.
But it must be admitted that it is exceedingly difficult to arrive at the facts in any particular case.
I shall be rash enough to give an opinion as to the actualfacts in connexion with the common Yew (Taxus baccata). The seeds are poisonous to poultry and pheasants, but the fleshy part round the seed is eaten with impunity by many wild birds (blackbirds, etc.). The leaves are sometimes poisonous and even fatal to horses, cattle, sheep, donkeys, and goats, but they are not eaten by or are harmless to roedeer. When, however, e.g., horses are killed by eating yew, it is generally found that they have been grazing on cut-off branches which have been left lying on the ground. In this condition probably some specially poisonous substance is developed in them.
As regards rabbits, it would be extremely comforting to believe that they would eat yew-leaves or anything else which would kill them, but, so far as one can judge, they can eat all sorts of things which ought to do so with perfect impunity.
Bright colours of fruits—Unripe fruits and their effects—An intemperate Fungus—Oranges—Prickly pear and the monkey—Strong seeds—Bill-of-fare of certain birds—A wood-pigeon and beans—Ants and seeds—Bats, rats, bears, and baboons—The rise in weight of a Big Gooseberry—Mr. Gideon and the Wealthy Apple—Crossing fruits—Breadfruit and banana—Dates—Figs—Olives—Pineapples by the acre—Apples and pears—Home and Canadian orchards.
AT Christmas time and during late autumn, there is but little colour in the country. Most green grasses have become a dull greyish-green, and the leafless brown and grey branches of the trees are not, at first sight, particularly interesting.
But amongst this monotony of sober colouring, points of bright red or flaming scarlet may be noticed here and there. Sometimes it is a spray of Hips (the fruit of the Rose), or it may be a cluster of Hawthorn berries. At Christmas the Holly is positively gaudy with its bright scarlet fruit set off by the shining dark green leaves.
Most fruits are some shade of red, but every fruit is conspicuous and easily seen.