The slightest touch breaks off the brittle point with the little knob, the canal of the hair is thus opened, and it penetrates any soft substance; in consequence of the pressure which the resistance to its entry exerts upon the sac, a portion of the poisonous juice is ejected out into the wound. The poisons of our native nettles and snakes are not of much consequence, but the nearer we approach the tropics, the more frequent and more deadly they both become. Where the glowing Indian sun ripens the poison of the fearful spectacle snake, there grow the most dangerous nettles. Every one among us has felt the slight but irritating sting of the nettle which it produces by its slender poisonous hair, but we have no notion of the torture which its near allies (Urtica stimulaus, Urtica crenulata) produce in the East Indies. A gentle touch suffices to cause the arm to swell up with the most frightful pain, and the suffering lasts for weeks; nay, a species growing in Timor (Urlica urentissima) is called by the natives Daoun Setan (devil’s leaf), because the pain lasts for years, and often even death can only be avoided by the amputation of the injured limb. We do, indeed, find many violent poisons in this family, and even some species of fig are included among the most dangerous plants (Ficus toxicaria), but it is not worth while to linger among those of lesser importance. The tales recounted of the Upas and the Poison-valley mingle almost like a dark and gloomy legend in our knowledge of the East Indian islands. In the Sixteenth Century stories circulated about the macassar poison-tree of the Celebes; and physicians and naturalists came gradually to tell of the action of the poison, the descriptions of which had become so terrible that if the smallest quantity entered the blood, not only immediate death resulted, but its action was so fearfully destructive that within half an hour afterward the flesh fell from the bones. From Rumph we learned that the poison-tree is also met with in Sumatra, Borneo, and Bali, as well as in Celebes. But the Dutch surgeon, Försch, first spread the wild tales of the poison-tree of Java about the end of the Eighteenth Century.