nity. There is buttercup, so horribly acrid that cows carefully
avoid it in their closest cropped pastures; and yet your cow is not
usually a too dainty animal. There is aconite, the deadly poison with
which Dr. Lamson removed his troublesome relatives. There is baneberry,
whose very name sufficiently describes its dangerous nature. There are
horse-radish, and stinging rocket, and biting wall-pepper, and still
smarter water-pepper, and worm-wood, and nightshade, and spurge, and
hemlock, and half a dozen other equally unpleasant weeds. All of these
have acquired their pungent and poisonous properties, just as nettles
have acquired their sting, and thistles their thorns, in order to
prevent animals from browsing upon them and destroying them. And the
animals in turn have acquired a very delicate sense of pungency on
purpose to warn them beforehand of the existence of such dangerous and
undesirable qualities in the plants which they might otherwise be
tempted incautiously to swallow.

In tropical woods, where our 'hairy quadrumanous ancestor' (Darwinian
for the primaeval monkey, from whom we are presumably descended) used
playfully to disport himself, as yet unconscious of his glorious destiny
as the remote progenitor of Shakespeare, Milton, and the late Mr.
Peace--in tropical woods, such acrid or pungent fruits and plants are
particularly common, and correspondingly annoying. The fact is, our
primitive forefather and all the other monkeys are, or were, confirmed
fruit-eaters. But to guard against their depredations a vast number of
tropical fruits and nuts have acquired disagreeable or fiery rinds and
shells, which suffice to deter the bold aggressor. It may not be nice to
get your tongue burnt with a root or fruit, but it is at least a great
deal better than getting poisoned; and, roughly speaking, pungency in
external nature exactly answers to the rough gaudy labels which some
chemists paste on bottles containing poisons. It means to say, 'This
fruit or leaf, if you eat it in any quantities, will kill you.' That is
the true explanation of capsicums, pimento, colocynth, croton oil, the
upas tree, and the vast majority of bitter, acrid, or fiery fruits and
leaves. If we had to pick up our own livelihood, as our naked ancestors
had to do, from roots, seeds, and berries, we should far more readily
appreciate this simple truth. We should know that a great many more
plants than we now suspect are bitter or pungent, and therefo