Decorative Nightshade
The nightjar suggests the nightshade. An account reaches me from a correspondent in Winnipeg, where newspapers comment yearly on the vanloads of the woody nightshade that are brought into the town for sale. The berries it seems are so favourite a decoration that some fears are expressed for the decimation of the plant. We do not value it highly in England ; and perhaps for this reason it is one of the plants that is multiplying continuously. Few, I should say, would be more difficult to eradicate. It has been one of the first colonisers—such is my experience—of rubbish dumps in the neighbourhood of London ; it is common in hedgerows of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. It might be worth the while of game preservers to encourage it in coverts. No berry (such again is my personal experience) is, more highly appreciated by the pheasant. The bird does not share the human belief that the berry is poisonous. How queerly these solanaceous plants vary between edible and poisonous character / Does any fruit look more poisonous, for example, than the seed head of the potato ? On the other, hand one of the most poisonous of seeds, the laburnum, almost suggests an edible pea. " Warning coloration " is quite absent.
' W. BnAC.H THOMAS.
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