especially one in the vicinity of the Ramble, the proper ty of Mr. Cockburn, exceed, in the depth of shade and gracefulness of umbrage, all other descriptions of natural arbours. The pimento-tree literally renders the atmosphere redolent of fragrance, which is more than I can say of many of these trees in such favour with our poets. The pimento, moreover, furnishes a poetical image to the observer who looks for minor shrubs about it; the pimento "suffers no rival plant to flourish within its shade." The cocoa-tree is, perhaps, the most generally useful to man of all others. It affords him a palatable fruit, a refreshing beverage, a wholesome vegetable, materials for constructing, fibres for cordage, foliage for thatching houses, a spirituous liquor, and a limpid oil.

The cocoa-tree begins to bear fruit, in a rich soil, at four years; in poor, arid land, not before ten years. The tree lives from eighty to one hundred years, and bears till about thirty-five. On an average, a tree produces annually from eighty to one hundred nuts, which are capable of yielding about twenty pounds of oil. There is a fruit-tree very common in Jamaica, the papaw, the fruit of which is much esteemed by the negroes: the milky juice which exudes from it is thought to possess the property of rendering the toughest meat tender, by applying it over the surface. There is a papaw in the garden of Madame Sanette, from an incision in which, I think, a tea-spoonful of the milky juice would flow in ten minutes. Humboldt says, "in comparing the milky juices of the papaw, the cow-tree, and the hevea, (from which the Indian rubber is procured,) there appears to be a striking analogy between the juices which abound in caseous matter, and those in which caoutchouc prevails. (Elsewhere, he states that the ultimate principle of cheese is caoutchouc: no wonder that cheese should be indigestible, if we cannot eat Stilton without swallowing Indian rubber.) All the white and newly prepared caoutchouc, as well as the impermeable cloaks manufactured in South America,

by placing a layer of milk of hevea between two pieces of cloth, exhale an animal and nauseating odour, which seems to indicate that the caoutchouc, in coagulating, carries with it the caseum, which is, perhaps, only an altered albumen." What a valuable introduction into Jamaica would be that of the palo de vaca! The milk of the cow-tree is an exception to that of most other plants, which is generally acrid and poisonous; but this, so far from being bitter or acrimonious, is of an agreeable flavour; and those who make use of it are said to grow sensibly fatter during the season the tree yields most milk.

The mountains of Jamaica are decked to their highest summits with the brightest verdure. It is not only the giants of the forests that are to be found there: the graceful rivals of the inmates of our conservatories are to be seen in all the native bloom of the wild beauty that delights in liberty: the citron and the orange, the star-apple, and the tamarind, flourish in the lower mountain range; and wherever the huts of the negroes are congregated in the valleys, or spread over the face of a sloping hill, the patches of ground here and there laid out in gardens, are sure to present the same broad foliage of plantains and bananas, the same bright verdure of waving Guinea-grass and stately corn.

ge

Will the day ever come, when the natural advantages of this noble island will be estimated by their neral development, and not surmised from the limited success of a partial cultivation? Will the day ever come when these advantages shall obtain the entire attention that is now taken up with futile animositywhen party politics shall be abandoned for patriotic views, and Jamaica shall become, what nature intended her to be, a peaceful country, on the face of whose fertility it will be evident to the world, "the labourer is worthy of his hire?"

I am, my dear Sir,

Yours, very truly,

R. R. M.

LETTER XXVI.

To DR. WEBSTER,

MY DEAR SIR,

POISON S.

Kingston, August 30, 1834.

If South America abounds in venomous reptiles, the West Indies have no dearth of poisonous plants; and in former times it is very certain their nature was better known to the negroes than even their names now are to the white inhabitants. I have inquired a good deal respecting poisons of the negro doctors, and found it difficult enough to overcome their disinclination to enter on this subject. But if their accounts are to be trusted, there are vegetable poisons known to exist here hardly less powerful than any known to us in Europe. Prussic acid, the poison that acts on life with the greatest energy and expedition, a single drop of which introduced into the circulation of an animal, killing it, says Magendie, comme s'il eut été frappé d'un boulet ou de la foudre."-is hardly less powerful than woorara, an Indian plant used by the natives of Guyana for poisoning their arrows: applied to a wound, it produces immediate death, but taken internally, is less speedy in its operation. There are various others. known to the natives of these islands, as well as of South America, capable of producing immediate death. The action of most of these is on the nervous system. The most powerful poisons appear to act directly on it. The juice of the upas-tree, used by the Indians for poisoning their arrows, when applied to a wound, kills in five minutes; yet when three times the quantity of the poison is applied to a portion of the sciatic nerve, laid bare for the purpose, it produces no effect. The

most direct poison to the nervous system acts quickest when introduced into the circulation by an external wound; and many of the very poisons which destroy the nervous energy most suddenly when applied to a particular nerve, produce no bad effects. To one who looks on the nerves as the circulating medium of a volatile elastic fluid, such as the nervous energy is described by Mead, it will be difficult to understand the possibility of the most powerful poisons being applied to nerves without any ill effects. But may we not look upon the nervous system as the apparatus for the the transmission and direction of the vital energy, or aura, which is the principle of life,-the sanguineous system as the source of its elimination,-and when a virulent poison has been introduced into it, understand why its influence is generally exerted on the nervous system long before it is exerted on the heart? Celsus says that venomous bites kill by extinguishing the vital heat. It is not by coagulating the blood, or, indeed, by any specific action on the blood that is cognizable to us, that many of the most powerful poisons produce death. The woorara produces its effects on the brain, and not the heart; the upas, it is supposed by Orfila, on the spinal column. The ticunas, a very active poison of the Indians; made from the juices of various withes or lianes, evaporated to a thick consistence, when introduced into the jugular vein of a dog, kills on the spot, and, unlike the venom of the viper, does not coagulate the blood.

The curare, we are told by Humboldt, is prepared from a withe called vejuco de mavacure, with which the Indians poison their arrows; it kills the largest animals very speedily, and acts on the circulation. It is certain that the flesh of the animals killed by this very active poison is nowise impaired by it. Humboldt remarks, "it seems all the poisons come from the withes."

Raynal makes a similar observation. The creeping plants (he says) called lianes, of which there are vast VOL. II.

6

numbers in all tropical woodlands, furnished the poison which was in universal request on the continent. The immediate death that arises from this poison, he thinks, so far from coagulating the blood, when mixed with that fluid recently drawn and warm, prevents coagulation, and even, for some time, putrefaction. There is one species of poison arising from decomposition of animal matter, the intensity of whose virus in tropical climates is very little known. Some experiments have been made in Europe, mentioned by Orfila, of putrescent blood having been applied to an abraded surface; one producing death in twenty-six hours; another in eighteen; and of bile in a state of decomposition, being applied to a wound, and death occurring in twenty hours; which event, he says, does not depend on local irritation, or even of its action on the circulating sys

tem.

In hot climates, the concentrated poison of putrescent animal matter, I suspect, produces death much more speedily than Orfila states here; and its effects seem to be similar to those of asphyxia, such as came under the care of Dupuytren, in three instances, arising from only inhaling the vapour of decomposed animal matter, or sulphureted hydrogen gas.

I stated, in my Eastern Travels, I had been informed by an Arab barber who practised physic, that one of the most deadly poisons was prepared from the mucous membrane of the intestines, taken from the putrid body; and had also been told by Lady Hester Stanhope, that the Arabs made use of several poisons unknown in Europe, the deadliest of which was that extracted from the intestines of a murdered man. I was not a little surprised, very lately, to find that the knowledge of this active poison from the dead human body, known to the Arabs, and whose existence I have heard denied in Europe, was known to the native Indians of the West India Islands, and is described by Garcilasco de la Vega, in his History of the civil Wars of the Spaniards in the Indies, vol. i. chapter 42.