THE " POISON UPAS " TREE.

Thames Star, Volume IX, Issue 3077, 27 December 1878, Page 1

THE " POISON UPAS " TREE.

| Among the numerous fictions regarding the animal and plant world that still go to form the staple of "popular science" compilations for the Tillage library, that regarding the pestiferous exhalations from the " poison upas " is prominent. The erroneous and exaggerated statements respecting the upas tree (Antiaris toxicana) are due to a Dutch surgeon, Dr. Foersch, who circulated them about the close of the last century. The tree was described as " growing in a desert tract, with no other plant near it for the distance of 10 or 12 miles. 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 furnished with proper directions, and armed with due precaution, but not two out of every twenty, ever returned." Dr. Foersch states that he obtained his information from some of the survivors who had been lucky enough to escape, although the ground was strewn with the skeletons of their predecessors ; and such was the virulence of the poison that there are no fish in the waters, .nor has any other vermin been seen there; and when any birds fly near the tree, so that the effluvia reach them, they fall dead, a sacrifice to the poison. These statements having been quoted by Dr Darwin in his Botanic Garden, were thence disseminated through Europe. The upas is a tree often attaining a height of over 100 feet, and found native in the islands of the Indian Archipelago. The stamens and pistils are found on separate flowers on the same tree, or, botanically speaking, the plant is monoecious. The tree belongs to the natural family Artocarpaeeg), the plants of which almost all abound in juices that are deleterious to a high degree; although it includes many that are extremely useful to man in many ways* among these, for instance, the famous cow tree, which yields a rich and wholesome milk; the Ficus Indies, which produces gum shellac; Ficus Carrica, producing figs; Morns or mulberry tree, <fee. The upas tree, when pierced, exudes a milky juice which contains an acrid virulent poison, called rutiarin. This, when dried, forms a ' poison in which the natives dip their arrows. As specimens of the tree have long been cultivated in, botanic gardens, the reports regarding its venomous exhalations are known to be as erronous as ' those will be at some day that at present ascribe to eucalyptus the power of emitting febrifuge exhalations. The mistaken notion that long connected this noxious property with the upas arose from the fact that the tree occasionally grows in certain low valleys in Java, rendered unwholesome by an escape of carbonic acid gas from crevices in the ground, and emitted in such a quantity as to be fatal to animals that approach too closely. These poisonous valleys are connected with the numerous volcanoes of the island. According to Beinwadt, sulphurous vapours , are given off in such abundance from the craters of some of these volcanoes as to cause the death ■of a great number of tigers, birds, and insects; while, in some oases, the rivers and lakes are so charged with sulphuric acid that no fish can exist in them. The upas trees, therefore, although there is no doubt as to its inherent poisonous nature, has had to bear the reproach really due to volcanoes and their products.