This property of the amanita, at once places it in a separate category from all other organic poisons, it has yet to be shewn upon what this intoxicating fungus depends for its activity. Whether some secretion is formed in the tissue of the plant, or whether some new arrangement of the particles of matter or modification of the sporules, is brought about by entering the system, it is impossible to say. Langsdorf states that the small deep-coloured specimens of amanita, and thickly covered with warts, are said to be more powerful than those of a larger size and paler colour. As the effect is not produced until from one to two hours after swallowing the bolus, and as a pleasant intoxication may be obtained by this agent for a whole day, and from one dose only, there is a defined line between this and the ordinary narcotics and stimulants in common use. That the digestive powers of the stomach have no influence over the intoxicating properties of the plant, is manifested in the fact, that the active principle passes into the urine, not only not deteriorated but apparently increased, for, as we have seen, a teacup of the urine from a man, intoxicated by taking the amanita into his stomach, will cause him to be more powerfully intoxicated than by the {169} original dose. We have, therefore, but two conjectures left for consideration, either the original intoxicating principle is excreted from the system in a condensed form, in which case its indestructibility by digestion, makes it approach the ordinary organic poisons, or there must be an increase of the toxic agent, in which case we must suppose a reproductive process having taken place in the system. "There is," says Dr. Mitchell, "in the wild regions of our western country, a disease called the _milk sickness_, the _trembles_, the _tires_, the _slows_, the _stiff-joints_, the _puking fever_, _&c._" The animals affected with this disease, "stray irregularly, apparently without motive;" they lose their power of attention, and finally tremble, stagger, and die. "When other animals--men, dogs, cats, poultry, crows, buzzards, and hogs, drink the milk or eat the flesh of a diseased cow, they suffer in a somewhat similar manner." This disease is attributed by Dr. Mitchell to the animals having grazed on pasture contaminated with mildew, and the resemblance to the effects of the amanita, together with the persistence of the specific principle within the fluids and tissues of the body, render it more than probable that to some fungoid growth, is due the peculiar toxic effects here noticed. Further: "The animals made sick by the beef of the first one, have been in their turn the cause of a like affection in others; so that three or four have thus fallen victims successively." De Graaf states, that butter {170} made from the milk of diseased cows, though heated until it caught fire, did not lose its deleterious properties. The urine of diseased animals, collected and reduced by evaporation, produced