The 'Miraculous Devil' Seed
A local curiosity exhibit features strange, jumping seeds from Mexico, rumored to be poisonous and charged with mysterious 'electric fluid.'
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
We were yesterday shown by the proprietor of the Centrifugal Railway one of the most extraordinary natural curiosities it has ever been our fortune to behold, namely, animated seed. This seed, when placed on the ground or on a table, immediately begins to move about in all directions, sometimes traveling over a considerable space by a series of convulsive jerks. This extraordinary vegetable production was given to Mr. Gordon by Mr. Mathews, the gentleman from whom he rents the lot on which the railway is exhibited. These seeds grow on a tree in Mexico called the 'yerba de flecha' or arrow tree. On breaking a leaf or twig, a milky juice exudes, which is used by the Cosuitill Indians for poisoning the points of their arrows. A Mexican gentleman, on seeing the seed, expressed surprise at our rashness in touching it, stating it was held in the greatest abhorrence and fear, calling it 'Diablo de Miraclos,' or the miraculous devil. The only possible explanation of the extraordinary movements of this seed is that it is naturally charged with a vast quantity of electric fluid.
“A more miraculous looking article we certainly never set our eyes upon; it is suggestive of spiritualism, odic force, and other abstruse powers.”
This piece highlights the 19th-century fascination with 'natural curiosities' and the often-exoticized, colonialist framing of Indigenous knowledge. While we now understand these 'animated' seeds are caused by the movement of moth larvae inside the seed pod, the historical report captures a moment when the frontier public was eager to blend scientific curiosity with supernatural wonder.
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