Desultory notes on the origin, uses, and effects of ardent spirit / by a physician.

Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Desultory notes on the origin, uses, and effects of ardent spirit / by a physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    a dose of marking-nut.* This is administered very cleverly, by prickino- a grass-hopper with a needle, the point of which has been previously tipped with a little of the acrid juice, and giving it to the bird to eat. The cage used is low, and the bottom covered with gravel.f Bees, wasps and flies often become much intoxicated about the dis- tilleries, being attracted by the sugar which abounds there—all these, however, maybe acquiredus tes.J But why is it that goats and sheep, camels§ and asses, select poisonous and intoxicating plants as food] which other animals instinctively avoid? Do not the distinctive impres- sions of their peculiar organs make thedemand, uninfluenced by previous practices or any imitative process? Their discrimination in respect to food is as natural a result of distinct organic functions, as the peculi- arities of the products of an acorn, a walnut, a chesnut, or an apple seed. Viewing the subject in such a light, we may perceive the cause of the very great diversities of conformation and function which exist to in- struct us in the intentions of the one who hath made nothing invain.^ Instinct guides the caterpillar to the leaf, the duckling to° the pool, and the samlet to the ocean. Animals are not left to obtain a know- ledge of the nourishment indispensably necessary to them from obser- vation, nor to supply their wants by the dictates of experience.i| It has been observed that the rot in sheep, which particularly affects the liver of that animal, is much more prevalent after a wet than in a moderately dry season—this is attributed to the want of the usual stimulus to the bowels, of the bitter principle of well grown grass, which is not fully elaborated in close, warm, wet seasons, when the herbage grows too quickly. The sensations of cattle then instinctively lead them to search for stimulants of other kinds, as they feel the want of their natural and accustomed excitement.** This day (the 9th of Nov.) we see the sheep searching in the pasture for the leaves of a poplar tree which are broken off and scattered by the wind—and there is not a small cedar (in a field of twenty acres, * I do not know the botanical name of the plant which produces the seed so called by the English in India. The juice is deep black, acrid, and viscid, and is used as an escharotic, as well as for marking linen, and printing the black outlines of some Indian chintzes. t A Subscriber. Vale of Alford, Sept. 28, 1832. t Although it appears perfectly natural with us to see horses eat oats or corn, yet in the West Indies many of them refuse grain altogether; and after smelling it, seem as little inclined to taste it, as others would to drink rum. Those horses which we have seen were mountain ponies—a hardy diminutive race, surefooted and sagacious, who are turned loose among a variety of sweet and nutritious grasses. The horses in the plains are generally taught to eat grain, and those brought from the United States bring with them and continue their country habits, and expect good oats and corn. Another peculiarity is noticed by a modern traveller:—The Moors have large herds of oxen and camels; and others have also a number of fine horses, of which they take great care ; giving them milk, when it is plentiful, night and morning.—Caille's Travels through Central Africa, i. 66. K Camels browse upon a prickly shrub, called canuTs /horn, in preference to any other herb. The mastication of it produces a frothy salivation at the mouth, which appears to give great pleasure to the animal.—Vide Morier's Travels, vol. ii. chap. vii. page 115. Mignan's Travels in Chaldea, page 10. || Philosophy of Zoology, i. 243, 244. ** Sec Loudon's Mag. of Nat. History, vol. iv. 472.