harmful for a
person to use these medicines freely as to use alcoholic liquors in any
other form.

~20.~ Alcoholic liquors of all kinds are often adulterated. That is,
they contain other poisons besides alcohol. In consequence of this,
they may become even more harmful than when pure; but this does not make
it safe to use even pure liquor. Alcohol is itself more harmful than the
other drugs usually added in adulteration. It is important that you
should know this, for many people think they will not suffer much harm
from the use of alcohol if they are careful to obtain pure liquors.

~21. Some Experiments.~--How many of you remember what you have learned
in previous lessons about the poisonous effects of alcohol? Do people
ever die at once from its effects? Only a short time ago a man made a
bet that he could take five drinks of whiskey in five seconds. He
dropped dead when he had swallowed the fourth glass. No one ever
suffered such an effect from taking water or milk or any other good food
or drink.

~22.~ A man once made an experiment by mistake. He was carrying some
alcohol across a lawn. He accidentally spilled some upon the grass. The
next day he found the grass as dead and brown as though it had been
scorched by fire.

~23.~ Mr. Darwin, the great naturalist, once made a curious experiment.
He took a little plant with three healthy green leaves, and shut it up
under a glass jar where there was a tea-spoonful of alcohol. The
alcohol was in a dish by itself, so it did not touch the plant; but the
vapor of the alcohol mixed with the air in the jar so that the plant had
to breathe it. In less than half an hour he took the plant out. Its
leaves were faded and somewhat shrivelled. The next morning it appeared
to be dead. Do you suppose the odor of milk or meat, or of any good
food, would affect a plant like that? Animals shut up with alcohol die
in just the same way.

~24. A Drunken Plant.~--How many of you remember about a curious plant
that catches flies? Do you remember its name? What does the Venus's
fly-trap do with the flies after it catches them? Do you say that it
eats them? Really this is what it does, for it dissolves and absorbs
them. In other words, it digests them. This is just what our stomachs do
to the food we eat.

~25.~ A few years ago Mr. Darwin thought that he would see what effect
alcohol would have upon the digestion of a plant. So he put a
fly-catching plant in a jar with some alcohol for