much smaller. The flower clusters spring from the stems at the side of, or opposite to, the insertion of a leaf. The corolla is rotate, of a lilac-blue colour with a green spot at the base of each segment, or sometimes white, and bears the yellow sessile anthers united at their margins so as to form a cone in the centre of the flower. The flowers are succeeded by ovate scarlet berries, ½ in. long, which in large doses appear to be poisonous or, to say the least, dangerous to children, cases of poisoning by them having occurred. Solanum Dulcamara subject to the same parasitic fungus (Phytophthora infestans) as the potato, and may serve as a medium for communicating the spores to the potato if not removed from the hedges of the fields where potatoes are grown. The plant derives its names of “bittersweet” and Dulcamara from the fact that its taste is at first bitter and then sweet. It is a native of Europe, North Africa and temperate Asia, and has been introduced into North America. The dried young branches are known in pharmacy under the name dulcamara.
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Fig. 1.—Bittersweet (Solanum Dulcamara), 23 nat. size. 1, Flower; 2, fruits, 12 nat. size; 3, berry, cut across, enlarged; 4, seed, much enlarged. |
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Fig. 2.—Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna). Flowering branch, 13 nat. size. 1, Flower, after removal of the corolla, 23 nat. size; 2, corolla, with stamens, cut open and flattened, 35 nat. size; 3, cross section of ovary, much enlarged. |
Dulcamara contains a bitter principle yielding by decomposition a sugar dextrose and the alkaloid solanine. It also contains another glucoside dulcamarin, which when boiled with dilute acid splits up into sugar and dulcamaretin. Solanine appears to exert a depressant action on the vagus nerve and an excitant action on the medulla oblongata.
Solanum nigrum differs from S. Dulcamara in having white flowers in small umbels and globose black berries. It is a common weed in gardens and waste places, growing about 12 or 18 in. high, and has ovate, entire or sinuate or toothed leaves. Two varieties of the plant, one with red and the other with yellow berries, are sometimes met with, but are comparatively rare. The berries have been known to produce poisonous effects when eaten by children, and owe their properties to the presence of solanine. In Réunion and Mauritius the leaves are eaten like spinach.
Deadly nightshade, dwale or belladonna (Atropa belladonna) is a tall bushy herb of the same natural order (fig. 2). It grows to a height of 4 or 5 ft., having leaves of a dull green colour, with a black shining berry fruit about the size of a cherry, and a large tapering root. The plant is a native of central and south Europe, extending into Asia, and is found locally in England, chiefly on chalk and limestone, from Westmorland and southwards. The entire plant is highly poisonous, and accidents not infrequently occur through children and unwary persons eating the attractive-looking fruit. Its leaves and roots are largely used in medicine, on which account the plant is cultivated, chiefly in south Germany, Switzerland and France (see Belladonna).
The name nightshade is applied to plants of different genera in other countries. American nightshade is Phytolacca decandra (pokeweed, q.v.). The three-leaved nightshade is an American species of Trillium. The Malabar nightshade is Basella, which is widely used as a pot-herb in India. Enchanter’s nightshade is Circaea lutetiana, a small, glandular, softly-hairy plant, common in damp woods, with slender, erect or ascending stems, paired ovate leaves with long stalks, and small white flowers in terminal racemes, succeeded by a small fruit covered with hooked bristles; it is a member of the natural order Onagraceae, and is not known to possess any poisonous property; the name seems to have been given to it in the first place in, mistake for a species of Mandragora (see Mandrake).
NIGRA, COSTANTINO, Count (1828–1907), Italian diplomatist, was born at Villa Castelnuovo, in the province of Turin, on the 11th of June 1828. During the war of 1848 he interrupted his studies to serve as a volunteer against Austria, and was wounded at the battle of Rivoli. On the conclusion of peace he entered the Piedmontese foreign office; he accompanied Victor Emmanuel and Cavour to Paris and London in 1855, and in the following year he took part in the conference of Paris by which the Crimean War was brought to an end. After the meeting at Plombières between Cavour and Napoleon III. Nigra was sent to Paris again to popularize a Franco-Piedmontese alliance, Nigra being, as Cavour said, “the only person perhaps who knows all my thoughts, even the most secret.” He was instrumental in negotiating the marriage between Victor Emmanuel’s daughter Clothilde and Napoleon’s nephew, and during the war of 1859 he was always with the emperor. He was recalled from Paris when the occupation of the Marche and Umbria by the Piedmontese caused a breach in Franco-Italian relations, and was appointed secretary of state to the prince of Carignano, viceroy of the Neapolitan provinces. When Napoleon recognized the kingdom of Italy in 1861, Nigra returned to France as minister-resident, and for many years played a most important part in political affairs. In 1876 he was transferred to St Petersburg with the rank of ambassador, in 1882 to London, and in 1885 to Vienna. In 1899 he represented Italy at the first Hague Peace Conference. In 1904 he retired, and he died at Rapallo on the 1st of July 1907. He was created count in 1882 and senator in 1890. Nigra was a sound classical scholar, and published translations of many Greek and Latin poems with valuable comments; he was also a poet and the author of several works of folk-lore and popular poetry, of which the most important is his Canti popolari del Piemonte.
NIHILISM, the name commonly given to the Russian form of revolutionary Socialism, which had at first an academical character, and rapidly developed into an anarchist revolutionary movement. It originated in the early years of the reign of Alexander II., and the term was first used by Turgueniev in his celebrated novel, Fathers and Children, published in 1862. Among the students of the universities and the higher technical schools Turgueniev had noticed a new and strikingly original type—young men and women in slovenly attire, who called in question and ridiculed the generally received convictions and respectable conventionalities of social life, and who talked of reorganizing society on strictly scientific principles. They reversed the traditional order of things even in trivial matters of external appearance, the males allowing the hair to grow long and the female adepts cutting it short, and adding sometimes the
