The Antiaris alluded to above is the famous Upas tree of Java. The tree was _said_ to grow in a desert with not another living plant within ten miles of it. Such was the virulence of its poison that there were no fish in the waters. Neither rat, nor mouse, nor any other vermin had ever been seen there; and when any birds flew so near this tree that the effluvia reached them, they fell dead--a sacrifice to the effects of its poison. Out of a population of sixteen hundred persons who were compelled, on account of civil dissensions, to reside within twelve or fourteen miles of the tree, not more than three hundred remained alive in two months. Criminals condemned to die were offered the chance of life if they would go to the Upas tree and collect some of the poison. They were provided with masks (not unlike our modern motor-veils), and yet not two in twenty returned from the expedition. All the foregoing statements were for years implicitly believed. They were vouched for by a Dutch surgeon resident in Java. Medicine is a profession, and Holland is a country which would in no way lead one to expect such magnificent mendacious audacity! For the whole of the preceding statements about Antiaris is pure romance. The inner bark of young trees, when made into coarse garments, produces an extremely painful itching, whilst the dried juice is a virulent arrow poison. Hellebore and Aconite were the favourite poisons of the Marquise de Brinvilliers and other specialists of the Middle Ages. The Christmas Roses or Hellebores were known to be poisonous fourteen hundred years before the Christian era, and are still used in medicine. Aconite, which has a tuberous root-stock, is dangerous, for it is occasionally eaten in mistake for the horse-radish, to which it has a faint resemblance. All kinds of aconite are poisonous. That of one of the Indian species is used to tip the arrows employed in shooting tigers. Trials by ordeal were very common in ancient times. The theory was that an innocent person was not injured by certain drugs, which, however, proved immediately fatal to the guilty.