NOTES AND NEWS. 175 



Mr. F. V. Coville, Botanist of the Department of Agriculture, has 

 left on a collecting trip to the Pacific coast. He will visit Oregon and 

 Washington. 



The Swiss society Rambertia has laid out an Alpine garden near 

 Montreiix, at an elevation of 6,000 feet, where the most beautiful 

 trees and flowers of the country are to be cultivated. 



While bicycling in Ontario last summer, I noticed by the roadside 

 what appeared to be a very large dandelion. I secured the specimen 

 and found it to be a dandelion in which what would normally be a 

 floret was a head of florets, so that the large receptacle bore some 

 twenty heads instead of florets, and each head was made up of ten or 

 twelve florets. — W. A. Bastcdo. 



Upon a few of the old cypress trees that surround Lake Drum- 

 mond, in the Dismal Swamp, and contribute largely to the rather 

 weird aspect of the lake, cling small tufts of Hanging or Spanish 

 'W.O'i,'-, {Tillandsia usneoidcs). The stems do not exceed two feet in 

 length, and give but a poor idea of this characteristic plant of our 

 southern swamps. — TJios. H. Kearney, Jr. ^ U. S. Department of Agri- 

 enltiire, Washmgton, D. C. 



"Poison ivy [R/ms radicans) has long been regarded by the ignor- 

 ant with a degree of awe akin to superstition. No one was able to tell 

 how it produced its effects, and why it attacked some people and not 

 others. Mysterious principles were relied upon to explain the phe- 

 nomena, and up to the present time the common belief has been that 

 the poisonous constituent was really an exhalation from the plant. In 

 the latter part of the last century it was so regarded by the expert ; 

 then as our knowledge of plant chemistry advanced step by step, it 

 was attributed more concretely to a specific gas, a volatile alkaloid, 

 and a volatile acid like formic acid. More recently still, bacteria have 

 been accused of causing the affection. Experiments have seemed to 

 verify these ideas in turn, but the falsity of all has at last been proved 

 by the discovery of a more tangible compound. In January, 1895, Dr. 

 Franz Pfaff, of Harvard University, announced that the poison is in 

 reality a non-volatile oil. Numerous experiments have been per- 

 formed with the purified oil, and it has been shown to produce exactly 

 the same effects as the plant itself. Dr. Pfaff has called this substance 

 ' toxicodendrol.' It is found in all parts of the plant, even in the 

 wood after drying. Like all oils, it is insoluble in water, and there- 

 fore cannot be washed from the skin with water alone. Alcohol dis- 

 solves it readily. Alkalies saponify it, and thus render it inert, but 

 this result is more easily obtained by an alcoholic solution of the sugar 

 of lead (lead acetate)." — V. K. CJiesnut in Year Book of tlie Department 

 of Agriculture. 



