xi PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 
:. 
certainly is not the case; but the Pteris aquilina may be the plant 
meant under the name of Mockshauw. 1 throw this out as a mere 
suggestion; at the same time I ought to remark, that in perusing the 
“Materia Venenaria regni Vegetabilis,” of Puihn, I met with an ob- 
servation relative to Orontium aquaticum, (which also inhabits the 
borders of rivers, and such places as the Delaware Indians were said 
to have resorted to for their favourite Mockshauw,) which induced me 
to think it not improbable, that this is the plant intended by that name. 
The observation is as follows : “Orontii aquatici radix, quee cineribus 
tosta Americanis sylvestribus cibo est, cruda ob acredinem homini- 
bus toxifera habetur. Semina quoque, que bene siccata et cum aqua 
aliquoties cocta ferculum exhibent, cruda acerrima sunt.’’* 
“The Indians had their sallads,’* we are told by the late Professor 
Barton, who remarks at the same time that the “ Indian sallad,” and 
the “ Shawnee sallad,” of the states of Kentucky and Ohio, are praised 
by the white settlers; and adds, “they are unknown to me.”+ It 
An officer of the war department pointed out this plant to me in a marsh in the city of 
Washington, and informed me, that an officer in the army, with whom he was acquainted, 
had caused the plant to be dug up, the roots bruised, moistened, and applied to a very 
extensive and ill-conditioned ulcer, in which mortification had commenced, and that 
one or two applications of the poultice checked the progress of the mortification, and 
the sore healed kindly and rapidly. 
* Materia Venenaria, p. 80. 
{ Collections for a Materia Medica, and Discourses on some of the principal deside- 
rata of Natural History, read before the Philadelphia Linnzan Society. 
