[Urtica.  I. 191.  Nettle.  The sting has a bag at its base, and a perforation near its point, exactly like the stings of wasps and the teeth of adders; Hook, Microgr. p. 142.  Is the fluid contained in this bag, and pressed through the perforation into the wound, made by the point, a caustic essential oil, or a concentrated vegetable acid?  The vegetable poisons, like the animal ones, produce more sudden and dangerous effects, when instilled into a wound, than when taken into the stomach; whence the families of Marfi and Psilli, in antient Rome, sucked the poison without injury out of wounds made by vipers, and were supposed to be indued with supernatural powers for this purpose.  By the experiments related by Beccaria, it appears that four or five times the quantity, taken by the mouth, had about equal effects with that infused into a wound.  The male flowers of the nettle are separate from the female, and the anthers are seen in fair weather to burst with force, and to discharge a dust, which hovers about the plant like a cloud.]

        And fell LOBELIA’S suffocating breath
        Loads the dank pinion of the gale with death.—­
195 With fear and hate they blast the affrighted groves,
        Yet own with tender care their kindred Loves!—­
        So, where PALMIRA ’mid her wasted plains,
        Her shatter’d aqueducts, and prostrate sanes,

[Lobelia.  I. 193.  Longiflora.  Grows in the West Indies, and spreads such deleterious exhalations around it, that an oppression of the breast is felt on approaching it at many feet distance when placed in the corner of a room or hot-house.  Ingenhouz, Exper. on Air, p. 14.6.  Jacquini hort. botanic.  Vindeb.  The exhalations from ripe fruit, or withering leaves, are proved much to injure the air in which they are confined; and, it is probable, all those vegetables which emit a strong scent may do this in a greater or less degree, from the Rose to the Lobelia; whence the unwholesomeness in living perpetually in such an atmosphere of perfume as some people wear about their hair, or carry in their handkerchiefs.  Either Boerhaave or Dr. Mead have affirmed they were acquainted with a poisonous fluid whose vapour would presently destroy the person who sat near it.  And it is well known, that the gas from fermenting liquors, or obtained from lime-stone, will destroy animals immersed in it, as well as the vapour of the Grotto del Cani near Naples.]

[So, where Palmira. I. 197.  Among the ruins of Palmira, which are dispersed not only over the plains but even in the deserts, there is one single colonade above 2600 yards long, the bases of the Corinthian columns of which exceed the height of a man:  and yet this row is only a small part of the remains of that one edifice!  Volney’s Travels.]