KILLED BY A POISONED DAGGER.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1032, 18 November 1882, Page 1

KILLED BY A POISONED DAGGER.

The French papers record a remarkable accident by which the Comte de Belmont has had the misfortune to lose his youngest son. The Count before his marriage had been a traveller, and from the Polynesians Island he had gathered a remarkable collection of lethal weapons shewing the ingenuity, and in some cases at least the artistic skill and power lavished on kris and zagaie, on sword snd dagger. In a collection of this nature intended to show the warlike methods of savage races, arrows and other weapons whose shining blades had been dipped in poison were of course conspicuous. His sons —Albert, aged eight, Rndolphe, aged twelve years—having been left alone for a short time in the cabinet, with inquisitive rashness of childhood took down two of the weapons to play with. Chance placed in the hands of the youngest child one of the poisoned weapons, and a slight scratch on the wrist w T as sufficient to inject the fatal virus. When the unhappy father returned he saw his youngest child writhing in agony upon the ground, a prey to frightful convulsions, from which death alone relieved him. The medical man who was called in was ui.iii.blo to save him, and could not even recognise the poison on the dagger blade. That most commonly used for such purposes is derived from the strychnos tvxifem The xcoomli is said in some cases to have retained its poisonous activity after being kept dry for five years. — \\ ■inches!or Guardian.