ACONITE, (Amhara), a genus of plants of the natural order ranuaculacem (q.v.), having five petaloid sepals, of which the upper one is helmet-shaped, and two hammer headed petals concealed within the helmet-shaped sepal. The fruit consists of 3 to 5 fol licles. A. napellus, the common WOLF'S-BANE or 31o:cu.'s-noon, often cultivated in flower-gardens for the sake of its erect racemes of blue flowers, is a somewhat doubtful native of England, but common in some parts of Europe. The roots are fusiform and clustered. The root and whole plant are very poisonous, containing an alkaloid called aeonita or aconitine, one of the most virulent of all known poisons; but an extract of the leaves is a valuable medicine, administered in small doses for nervous and other dis eases. An A., sometimes called A. stoereklanurn, but generally regarded as a variety of A. eammarum (also known as A. panieulatum), was brought into great repute on the continent during the last c. by Dr. Stoerek, an Austrian imperial physician, and is still
much cultivated for medicinal use. The same properties seem, in greater or less degree, to belong to a number, if not to all, of the species of this genus, and they contain the same alkaloid. The virulent bah poison of India, equally fatal in its effects whether introduced into wounds or taken into the stomach, is prepared from the roots of several species. The A. ferox of Nepaul, from which much of it is obtained, has been iden tified by Drs. Hooker and Thompson with A. napellus. Two other Himalayan species, A. palmatum and A. luridum, are equally employed in its preparation. A. album, or white-flowered monk's-hood, a native of the Levant, and A. loottonam, yellow-flowered monk's-hood, or wolf's-bane, a native of the Alps, are not unfrequent in our flower gardens.