We doubt much whether any wild herbivorous animals will feed upon poisonous plants; they are constantly in the exercise of their instinctive faculties, and to these faculties the organs of taste (and smell) administer. Hence they constantly reject all that is deleterious. But this is not the case with domestic animals, whose instinct is much enfeebled, or curbed, from the peculiar circumstances in which they are placed. Hence accidents often happen, to the great loss of the farmer; for example, both horses and horned cattle will crop the foliage of the yew, which offers a temptation to them, especially if underfed, or fed almost exclusively on dry fodder; the foliage of the yew is poisonous. Cattle often perish from eating the long-leaved water hemlock, or cowbane, (_Cicuta virosa_.) "When Linnæus visited Tornea, he found a terrible malady sweeping away the cattle of the district, and which he at once traced to the long-leaved water hemlock. Scarcely, in fact, had he crossed the river, and landed from his boat on the meadow, before he felt convinced of the origin of the mischief. This deadly plant grew there in abundance, and it appeared that as soon as the cattle left off their winter fodder, and returned to pasturage, they died swollen and convulsed; as the summer came on the mortality decreased, and still more so with the advance of autumn. "The least attention," says Linnæus, "will convince us that brutes reject whatever is hurtful to them, and distinguish poisonous from salutary plants by natural instinct, so that this plant is not eaten by them in the summer and autumn, which is the reason that in those seasons so few cattle die; namely, such only as either by accident or pressed by extreme hunger eat of it. But when they are let into the pastures in spring, partly from their greediness after fresh herbs, and partly from the emptiness and hunger they have undergone during a long winter, they devour every green thing which comes in their way. It happens, moreover, that herbs at this time are small, and scarcely supply food in sufficient quantity. They are, besides, more juicy, and covered with water, and smell less strong, so that what is noxious is not easily discerned from what is wholesome. I observed, likewise, that the radical leaves were always bitter, the other not, which confirms what I have just said. I saw this plant in an adjoining meadow, mowed along with grass for winter fodder; and, therefore, it is not wonderful that some cattle, though but a few, should die of it in winter. After I left Tornea, I saw no more of this plant till I came to the vast meadows near Limmingen, where it appeared along the road, and when I got into the town I heard the same complaints as at Tornea, of the annual loss of cattle, with the same circumstances." Monkshood, meadow-sweet, hemlock, (_Conium maculatum_,) meadow-saffron, foxglove, etc., are occasionally eaten by cows, and prove fatal.