DARNEL

The powder of the seed of the Lolium temulentum , a poisonous gra , is not unfrequently found mixed with the flour of wheat, oats, and other cereals, and when these latter, under these circumstances, are partaken of as food, they give rise to more or le alarming symptoms of poisoning, which are thus enumerated by Dr Pareira:—Headache, giddine , languor, ringing in the ears, confusion of sight, dilated pupil, delirium, heavine , somnolency, trembling convulsions, paralysis, and great gastro-intestinal irritation. One of the most specific signs of poisoning by darnel seeds is said by Seeger to be the trembling of the whole body. Dr Taylor mentions a case in which thirty persons who had partaken of bread containing darnel seeds were violently attacked with the above symptoms; and another case is on record of sixty persons in a prison at Cologne being similarly attacked from the same cause. Ha all states that the flour of the darnel seed presents the following appearance under the microscope:—“The starch corpuscles are polygonal, and resemble in this respect those of rice. They are, however, much smaller, and frequently united into compound grains of various sizes, the larger grains consisting of some fifty or sixty starch corpuscles.” The structure of the testa is very different from that of either rice or oat, or indeed any of the other cereal grains. It is formed of three coats or membranes. The cells of the outer coat form but a single layer, and, contrary to the arrangement which exists in the oat, their long axes are disposed transversely, in which respect they resemble rice. The fibres of the husk of rice and the cells of the testa of Lolium are, however, very distinct in other respects. In the former the cells are long and narrow, forming fibres, while in the latter they are but two or three times as broad. IMG:596405606043057898_i543.png: The cells of the second coat, which are ranged in two layers, follow a vertical disposition, an arrangement which is contrary to that which obtains in all the other cereal grains with the exception of rice. The cells of the third coat form but a single layer, and resemble those of other grains.