All the water parsneps may be confounded with it:  but these are known by the smallness of the umbels; and they are generally in bloom, so that this circumstance is a good criterion.

Care should at all times be taken, not to make use of any umbelliferous plants growing in water, as many of them are, if not altogether poisonous, very unwholesome.

625.  Colchicum autumnale.  Meadow-saffron.—­Baron Stoerch asserts, that on cutting the fresh root into slices, the acrid particles emitted from it irritated the nostrils, fauces, and breast; and that the ends of the fingers with which it had been held became for a time benumbed; that even a single grain in a crumb of bread taken internally produced a burning heat and pain in the stomach and bowels, urgent strangury, tenesmus, colic pais, cephalalgia, hiccup, &c.  From this relation, it will not appear surprising that we find several instances recorded, in which the Colchicumproved a fatal poison both to man, and brute animals.  Two boys, after eating this plant, which they found growing in a meadow, died in great agony.  Violent symptoms have been produced by taking the flowers.  The seeds, likewise, have been known to produce similar effects.

626.  Oenanthe crocata.  Hemlock.  Water DROPWORT.—­Eleven French prisoners had the liberty of walking in and about the town of Pembroke; three of them being in the fields a little before noon, found and dug up a large quantity of this plant with its roots, which they took to be wild celery, to eat with their bread and butter for dinner.  After washing it a while in the fields they all three ate, or rather tasted of the roots.

As they were entering the town, without any previous notice of sickness at the stomach or disorder in the head, one of them was seized with convulsions.  The other two ran home, and sent a surgeon to him.  The surgeon first endeavoured to bleed, and then to vomit him; but those endeavours were fruitless, and the soldier died in a very short time.

Ignorant yet of the cause of their comrade’s death, and of their own danger, they gave of these roots to the other eight prisoners, who all ate some of them with their dinner:  the quantity could not be ascertained.  A few minutes after, the remaining two who gathered the plant were seized in the same manner as the first; of which one died:  the other was bled, and a vomit forced down, on account of his jaws being as it were locked together.  This operated, and he recovered; but he was for some time affected with a giddiness in his head; and it is remarkable, that he was neither sick nor in the least disordered in his stomach.  The others being bled and vomited immediately, were secured from the approach of any bad symptoms.  Upon examination of the plant which the French prisoners mistook for wild celery, Mr. Howell discovered it to be this plant, which grows very plentifully in the neighbourhood of Haverfordwest.