WATER-HEMLOCK, deadly poisonous plants (Cicala) of the carrot family, known also by many other names, such as beaver poison, spotted parsley, muskrat-weed and musquash-root, the latter names being borrowed from the muskrat, which inhabits such swamps as the Cicala affects; and the odor of the roots of curtain species of the latter also re calls the musk-scented rodent. Cicuta titans Iota is a tall biennial, reaching eight feet in height, with a rigid, hollow stem marked with purple lines, that grows in swamps and wet lands throughout the northeastern United States. The leaves are decompound, even three pinnate, having coarsely serrate leaflets, with veins apparently ending in notches instead of at the points of the teeth, as in ordinary foliage. The flowers are very tiny and white, in decompound, terminal umbels, with unequal pediccls. The fruits are ovate-oblong, glabrous and slightly flattened laterally. The ribs are corky, the lateral ones being strongest. Spindle shaped, tuberous roots duster about the base of the stem, and are the cause of many deaths. They have an aromatic flavor and fleshy sub stance, and are frequently mistaken, especially by children, for the roots of sweet cicely, par snips, artichokes, or even horse-radish, and are sometimes eaten for no particular reason except that they are fleshy and exposed by washouts, freezing or digging-operations. Even livestock
are killed, not only by feeding on the tubers themselves but by drinking water poisoned by roots which have been crushed under the cattle's hoofs. The poisonous element in this Cicala is an aromatic oily fluid, which permeates the whole plant, but is found chiefly in the roots, and probably contains the alkaloid conine and the bitter principle cicutoxin. When eaten Cicada produces vomiting. colic, staggering and unconsciousness, and finally frightful convul sions which end in death. No chemical anti dote being known, the only treatment possible is to cleanse thoroughly the digestive system. and treat each stage of the attack with such medicines as seem necessary. Cattle may some times be saved by timely and repeated doses of melted lard. The elongated spindling-roots of the Wyoming water-hemlock, Cicuta orci dereralis. which in Montana is known as the wild parsnip, has a characteristic musky odor, and stock are poisoned either by the young plants or the roots. Other species of Ciao° have a similar appearance above ground and are equally poisonous.