sions, there is a quick approach, and short exclusively prepared from nux vomica, is a duration of the rigidity of death, and putre- white crystalline substance, but in the che faction commences in eight hours-exactly mists' shops it is usually to be seen in the a similar state of things has been noticed in beasts that have been overdriven, and in cocks that have died from fighting. Plants, as well as animals, are affected by this poison. Professor Marut states, that a quarter of an hour after immersing the root of a French bean in a solution of five grains of the extract of nux vomica in an ounce of water, the petals became curved downwards, and in twelve hours the plant died. Fifteen grains of the same extract were inserted in the stem of a lilac-tree, and the wound closed; in thirteen days the neighboring leaves began to wither. form of powder. It is odorless, but its taste is so intensely bitter, as to be perceptible when one part is diluted in a million parts of water. Its bitterness led to the unfounded and mischievous rumor that it was used in the manufacture of bitter beer. This brilliant idea originating (upon what grounds is not known) with a French chemist was for years noticed by a French professor to his pupils in the lecture-room; thence it found its way into the columns of the Times, and created a panic among the patrons of Messrs. Bass and Allsopp, that was only allayed after those gentlemen had been put to considerable After all the attention that has been be- trouble and expense by having their beers stowed upon nux vomica, the skill of man repeatedly analyzed, and throwing open their has been unable to detect any certain anti- gigantic breweries to the scrutiny of the dote. Its effects during life are too charac- wondering public. Within the last few days teristic ever to be mistaken; and after death, the Times has again alarmed us by a sus unlike most vegetable poisons, it is almost picion of our own correspondent, that artilinvariably to be found in the stomach of lery horses are being poisoned wholesale at those poisoned with it. But to the wretched Galata-serai. Chemical analysis will soon sufferer science brings no relief. The medical man has little else to trust to than emetics and the stomach-pump; artificial respiration ought also to be resorted to, and infusion of galls and green tea, on account of the tannin they contain, are mentioned as worthy of trial. In 1818, Pelletier and Caventou extracted from nux vomica the peculiar ingredient strychnine; it is to this that the seed owes its poisonous properties: it belongs to a class of substances which, owing to their action on vegetable colors, and their forming salts with acids, have been named vegetable alkalis or alkaloids, and of which the most familiar are morphia, obtained from opium, and quinine from Cinchona bark. decide the truth of this suspicion; in the meantime, in spite of the symptoms (which however do not all correspond with those of strychnia —for instance the swelling of the muscles, whatever that may mean), the apparent absence of motive for poisoning the horses, and the extreme improbability of the animals drinking water rendered bitter by poisonous doses of strychnia, will incline most persons to the hope that the present rumor is as false, if not as unfounded, as the one of 1852. As an article of the Pharmacopoeia, strychnine is used in the same class of diseases as nux vomica. Curiously enough, it has been suggested, though not by followers of Hahnemann, as a remedy for the only disease which resembles it in its effects tetanus; but there is no case recorded of its having been so used, even on one of the lower animals. Strychnine is likewise a constituent of St. Ignatius' beans, the seeds of a tree indigenous to the Philippine Islands; of one of the snake-woods in Asia, so called from the natives imagining that they possess the pow- The action of strychnine is about six times er of preserving them from the bites of ser- as violent as the extract of nux vomica. Dr. pents; and of the Upas Tienté or Tieltek, a Christison says: "I have killed a dog in large climbing shrub in Java. Dr. Darwin, two minutes with the sixth part of a grain in a publication entitled the Botanic Garden, injected in the form of an alkaline solution gives an account of the execution of crim- into the chest. I have seen a wild boar killed inals in Java by darts poisoned with the in the same manner with the third of a grain Tienté. A few minutes, he states, after the in ten minutes." Pelletier says: "Half a criminals are wounded, they tremble vio-grain blown into the mouth of a dog produced lently, utter fearful cries, and perish amid death in five minutes." horrible convulsions in ten or fifteen minutes. Medical literature abounds with instances This shrub is not to be confounded with the of men and women having been poisoned celebrated upas-tree, one of the largest fruit- by it both by accident and intentionally. A trees of Java, with the fabulous accounts of physician-Dr. Warner-died after taking which a traveller named Foersch amused our half a grain of the sulphate of strychnine grandfathers. in mistake for morphia. Strychnine, which in our own country is In 1845, a girl, thirteen years old, in the Edinburgh Infirmary, took by way of a joke three pills, each containing a quarter of a grain, belonging to another patient. She died in about an hour after she had swallowed the poison. In 1853, occurred another instance of poisoning by mistake. The chemist misnamed or misunderstood the prescription he was ordered to make up, and instead of sending a mixture containing two scruples of" strychnos nux vomica," he sent two scuples of nux vomica and two of strychnine. Death was the result of the blunder. said the lad, Mr. Taylor, the surgeon, go off directly afterwards.' I turned towards my desk and saw the bottle I had used the previous night. I took it up and saw that it was labelled 'strychnine.' I said, 'O! my God! I have given this in mistake to Mrs. Smyth!'' A verdict of manslaughter was returned against the chemist. The jury could have come to no other decision. Here was a In 1843, a German lady, for whom nux vomica had been prescribed, was seized with convulsions and fits of tetanus. The apothecary's lad through an "unhappy mistake" had substituted two drachms of the extract for one of the tineture, thereby augmenting man, reported to have been almost proverthe strength of the dose ten times. Fortu- bial for his correctness in attending to prenately the result was not fatal. Twenty or scriptions, passing the compliment to a nurthirty drops of a mixture containing aniseed sery maid, and entering into what he was was taken every five or ten minutes, and the pleased to call "general conversation," while lady recovered. he dispensed his medicines. He then reached from a shelf-on which are huddled together drugs the most innocent and the most poisonous a bottle labelled strychnine. But the label is neglected-nine grains of the deadly poison are duly weighed out-the draught is made up, and despatched with comfortable assurance inscribed upon the bottle "the mixture as before." Fortunately-and it is It would be impossible to relate anything much to the credit of the dispensing chemists that would exhibit more plainly the thought- these accidents are not very common; it less manner in which prescriptions may be would be useless to attempt to insist by law made up. One other instance, however, may upon such precautionary measures as blue be mentioned, as it displays the class of men bottles, or yellow labels, or poison closets, or at whose mercy we are placed by illness. It a poison-dispensing assistant, or any other of happened in the neighborhood of Romsley, the dozen plans that are invariably suggested in 1848. The statement which the chemist whenever we are startled by a case of acciread to the coroner and jury at the inquest dental poisoning. Each chemist must be of the unfortunate lady whose death was oc-aware what are the wisest precautions for casioned by his culpable carelessness, gives himself to adopt, but no special legislation is the best account of the accident: "On Monday last," stated the chemist, "I was called into my shop, where I saw the head nurse in Captain Smyth's family. I passed the compliment, and asked her how she was; and she did the same. She said she wanted some black draughts for the children. I began putting up the draughts and entered into general conversation. After I had put up the draughts, she said, 'I think Mrs. Smyth wants some more of the medicine that she took last, at all events I will take one bottle.' I told my assistant to get the prescriptionbook that I might see the prescription. I saw it contained salicine; I went up some steps to get the salicine, which is kept on an upper shelf. The shelf is in one corner of the shop where I keep things not often used. I took down, as I thought, the salicine and weighed out nine grains of it." This, he went on to state, was put in a bottle, labelled "the mixture" as before, and carried away by the servant. "The following morning," continued Mr. Jones, "after I had breakfasted and gone up-stairs to dress, I went into the shop as usual; my young man said to me 'Did you see Captain Smyth's servant gallop into town this morning?' 'I saw,' likely to aid a better observance of such measures if the consciousness of their position, and the dread of criminal punishment are not sufficient to deter even the most careful druggist from occasionally leaving their business to incompetent assistants, or from dispensing their medicines hurriedly or incautiously. Those who prescribe are scarcely less liable to mistakes than those who dispense. The other day, a physician in Paris unintentionally prescribed for a lady two pills, each containing one grain of strychnine. The poison was swallowed, and, wonderful to relate, without a fatal result. Within a still more recent date, a gentleman in London has had an equally miraculous escape. He had been recommended, by an eminent physician, under certain circumstances, to send to the chemist for one-third of a grain of morphia; instead of which he sent for three grains. They were sent him in three pills, which the invalid took one after the other. He luckily became very sick, and soon recovered. Scarcely a year passes without cases occuring of murder or suicide, in which strychnine is the agent made use of; and such is certain to be the case as long as there is free trade in the sale of drugs -as long as grocers are permitted to sell Battle's vermin-killer, or preparations of a similar description, to every person who looks for them. The advantages and difficulties, however, of restricting the sale of drugs have been so often argued, that it is useless to repeat them. We hasten to say what little is known of the antidotes of strychnine. Tannin has already been mentioned; its good effects rest chiefly on the authority of continental physicians. M. Tilley, in 1841, published a case in which a spoonful of laurel water, which would contain some tannin, was given after a tetanic fit. The patient vomited immediately afterwards; another spoonful was then given, upon which the spasm became less violent, and entirely disappeared after a third spoonful of the laurel water. In 1842, Dr. Lüdorche prescribed tannin in a case where half a grain of strychnine had been swallowed-and death did not ensue. That the preservation of life depended upon the tannic acid requires further proof. torture and death without leaving a trace of its presence behind? Tests there are, and plenty. The subject has been carefully and laboriously worked at, both by chemists and physiologists; and from time to time new means of detecting the poison have been discovered, rivalling each other in delicacy, until one of the most distinguished physiologists of the age has succeeded in demonstrating the presence of so minute an atom as the twenty-five-hundredth part of a grain. If nitric acid be dropped upon powdered nux vomica, an orange red color is produced. The same is the case with strychnine, as it is ordinarily met with in the shops, which is always more or less impure. But when the strychnine is quite pure, no change occurs. It was therefore necessary, on the discovery of strychnine, to search for some other substance which would be entirely depended on. In the course of a few years, several tests were discovered. In 1843, a French chemist, M. Marchand, announced that when strychnine is rubbed with peroxide of lead, and sulphuric acid, with some nitric acid, a blue mass is formed, which becomes successively violet, red, and yellow. Another chemist soon found that oxide of manganese has a very similar effect. Another test is chromate of potash, which produces a magnificent violet color. Chloride of gold, when added to strychnine dissolved in acetic acid, causes a yellowish white powder to be formed. In the mean time another foreigner, M. Donné of Paris, has stated that he has found iodine, bromine, and chlorine to be antidotes for the alkaloid of nux vomica, as well as for the other vegetable alkaloids. One grain of strychnine, followed immediately by tincture of iodine, was given to animals, which sustained no harm; but a delay of ten minutes rendered the antidote useless. No experiments appear to have been carried out to But besides these and several other chemidiscover if the same advantages can be de- cal tests, the presence of a poison which acts rived in cases of poisoning by nux vomica with the characteristic violence of strychnine itself. is capable of physiological proof; that is to In the American Journal of Sciences, Oc-say, if a portion of the suspected substance tober, 1855, a perfectly new antidote is men- be introduced into the system of a living tioned, which, should it prove on further creature, and convulsion and spasm ensue, trial satisfactory, will have the great advan- we may infer with certainty that strychnine tage of being always at hand: this is lard. is present. Its antidotal properties are founded upon the following circumstance. A gentleman having been much annoyed by some dogs, resolved to poison them. For this purpose a piece of meat containing one grain of strychnine, was placed on the ground beside some lard. A dog was observed to eat both meat and lard without being poisoned. The next night three pieces of meat were laid down containing strychnine, and no lard placed near it. In the morning three dogs were found dead. In nine instances, in which lard was given with the strychnine, the animals did not die. In eleven cases where no lard was given, all died. Half a grain was sufficient to produce death; but three grains failed when lard was What are the tests for strychnine? Do any exist? or is the poison as subtle as it is powerful, accomplishing its frightful work of The This mode of proof, in addition to the ordinary tests, has been made use of at the recent case of poisoning at Leeds with great success. Two mice, two rabbits, and a guinea-pig were inoculated with the spirituous extract obtained from the stomach first mouse died in two minutes, the second in twelve minutes, and one rabbit in fifty minutes, from the first introduction of the poison. The symptoms preceding death were in cach case general distress, disturbed respiration, twitchings and jerkings of the limbs, and rigidity of the body. The other rabbit suffered similarly, but after lying for a while apparently dead, it evidently recovered. In the guinea-pig the spasms were not so violent, but the next day the animal was found dead. Here the evidence thus obtained was most conclusive. But it is easy to suppose that life might be destroyed de by a dose of strychnine, and yet that suffi- nicated the result of further experiments, cient poison might not be produced after which are in the highest degree satisfactory. death to act secondarily upon an animal the He had deetcted by means of the strychsize of a rabbit, or even a mouse; the physio- noscopic frog the one two-thousand five hunlogical test, in short, would have been pro- dredth of a grain. He had, moreover, nounced a failure from its want of delicacy; stroyed a cat by one-sixth of a grain, had had not Dr. Marshall Hall, who has paid had the stomach prepared so as to get rid of much attention to the action of strychnine, all unnecessary matters, and after the lapse resolved upon trying similar experiments of some time, had placed in it successively upon frogs, in whom, as in all other cold- three frogs. What Dr. Hall terms strychblooded animals, the nervous force is far nism was induced in all three. How small better observed than in the higher classes. a quantity of strychnine remained in the He commenced his experiments by im-stomach, it is impossible to say; but that it mersing a frog in water in which was dis- must have been extremely minute is manisolved one thirty-third of a grain of a salt of fest, since a sixth of a grain is almost the strychnine. The frog died, after exhibiting minimum that will destroy a cat, and therethe usual phenomena. Another frog was fore almost the whole of it must have been destroyed by being subjected in the same absorbed by the blood-vessels, in the destruc manner to the influence of the one-fiftieth of tion of that animal. Especial thanks are a grain. These frogs were not affected in so due to Dr. Marshall Hall for the immediate striking a manner as Dr. Hall had hoped; publicity he has given to his interesting exthey had been some time removed from the periments. He has thus dissipated the fatal pools; the experiments were shortly after- delusion that strychnine cannot, like mineral wards continued upon young male frogs fresh poisons, be detected after death. With our from their native swamps, these being the present knowledge, it may be said with permost susceptible; and by the twelfth of Jan- fect confidence, that as no poison produces uary, 1856, he was able to state that he had during life such marked and characteristic been enabled to detect the one-thousandth of effects, so none is more certainly detected. a grain. after death than the vegetable poison, strychnine. On the twenty-ninth of March he commu DESOLATION OF PALESTINE. - In Palestine you | land seemed to lie under a spell.-Louth's Wanare nearly as much in the wilderness as when in derer in Arabia. Arabia, for as to inhabitants they are precisely the things which do not exist for all you can tell, except in the towns and villages you pass to be derived from American cheap literature, THE CANADIAN PUBLIC reap all the advantage through. You ride on day after day, and you fancy, would prefer that the British law of copyright should extend to Canada, or rather that British copyright works printed in the States should be excluded from entering Canada, but that they should be allowed to print them, paying a royalty to the author. As the case stands at present, although there is a very large reading public in Canada, every day increasing with the extension of education, as well as by the increase of population, the British author enjoys from it not the slightest profit. Kingston's Western Wanderings. rise over each hill, and you sink into each val- as the works printed from English copyrights ley, and except an occasional solitary traveller can be imported into the colony by payment of with his servant and his muleteer, or a Turkish a small duty. The Canadian publishers, I official with his party, rarely does a moving object appear upon the landscape. No cattle are on the land, and no passengers are on the highways. How lonely it is; and this loneliness strikes you more than that of the Desert, for it seems unnatural because here there should be life and there is none. Sometimes you may make out at a distance on the hillside a single figure, a man upon a donkey. It is the only moving thing your eye can detect all round. And so you go on through this desolate land. From Jerusalem to Beyrout you scarcely light upon one single scene of rural industry-not one single scene of life that can be compared with those on the Arab pastures from the top of Jabel El Sufar to the wells of El Mileh. There in places the country was full of people and children, and flocks and herds. -a rejoicing picture of pastoral existence in all its abounding wealth; while here, in the country of tillage, and towns, and villages, the whole WEIGHT OF BEES. It is not often that insects have been weighed; but Reaumur's curiosity was excited to know the weight of bees; and he found that 886 weighed an ounce, and 5,876 a pound. According to John Hunter, an ale-house pint contains 2,160 workers. Kirbey and Spence's Entomology. From Household Words. and gilded horns, swung on the centre part of the ancient hostelry, and still held out a It is now some six or seven years since I promise of good entertainment for man and first made acquaintance with the village of beast. And not in vain. There was still a Hurstfield. I don't know that it has any stall or two in the stable, and just above the particular beauty of site or neighborhood to signboard was a suite of rooms, so calm, so distinguish it from other places in Hamp- cool, so bright, that they formed a wonderful shire. It has the same pure air, the same contrast to the dingy apartments which it rich country all round-for it lies far away was my fate to occupy for ten months of the from the pastoral and romantic part of the year in town-and the maid was so active, county, but it has no fine views, no show and so pleasant to look upon, and the landhouses, nothing, in short, but what every lady was a widow, and quite accommodated to English hamlet can boast of in an equal her fallen fortunes, so motherly and atten degree, and yet I like it better than the tive, that before I had been established in the most picturesque situation in the world; rooms a week, I felt at home. To an Engbetter than crowded watering-places on the lishman, especially if he has travelled abroad, sea, or swarming retreats upon the lakes. or if he has inhabited a London lodging, that Hurstfield is ugly, lonely, deserted, and word expresses all. I felt at home, and that very cheap. Once upon a time a dozen four- is the reason I prefer Hurstfield to the most horse coaches passed through it every day. picturesque and aristocratic residence in There were horns heard as the watchful guard England. How I walked from village to caught the first glance of the Buffalo Inn. village, guided across the low levels by the Horses were changed in less than a minute, tapering spires of some old churches, and the luxurious Jehu smoking his cigar, and sometimes cheered in my progress by the never descending from the box. Horns with pleasant sound of their bells. How beauti a different tone were sounded at a later hour fully those gray old towers rise, clear and when the up Highflyer stopped at the Buffalo solemn in the calm evening air, and seem so to dine. Landlady, barmaid, and waiters fitted to their position that a church in a formed a corps of honor to receive the dining great roaring dirty London street seems by coach. The insides tumbled out, and the contrast entirely out of place. But a truce outsides tumbled down; and in hungry hurry to walks and steeple-chases such as I have and confusion, all tumbled in and took seats without ceremony, at the well-spread table. How so much food could be disposed of in fifteen minutes, and how such a charge could be made for cold meat and stale bread, were equally puzzling questions to landlord and traveller; but neither party stopped to discuss them. The stuffed and infuriated pas- professionally—not that he had attended on senger paid his three-and-sixpence, and resumed his place, thinking he had been robbed; the grumbling landlord looked at the diminished size of a round of beef as if he had been grievously wronged. But horns were heard no more, either with rapid note demanding a change of horses, or with more genial voice giving warning to get the dishes on the table. The last dinner was eaten; the last coach disappeared. Hurstfield grew into a really quiet, out-of-the way village, the Buffalo ceased to be an inn, except in a very small portion of its former self. The right wing was converted into a separate dwelling-house, the left wing was used as a barn, and the Buffalo, with tremendous tail mentioned. The proper study of mankind is man, so I invited the surgeon of Hurstfield to dinner. The place of the ancient barber, both in regard to phlebotomy and garrulity, is supplied by the modern village doctor. This was a very good specimen of the tribe. He knew everybody far and near,—and all the innumerable families he named - but his |