THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 73 



slippers. Canada ginger, serpetaria, bug-bane, Hydrastis, gold- 

 thread, pasque-flower, mandrake, blue cohosh, bloodroot, 

 squirrel-corn, sundew, wild indigo, cranesbill, Seneca snake- 

 root, mallow, passion-flower, rock-rose, spikenard, angelica, 

 beafberrv, vellow gentian, buckbean, butterfly weed, bitter- 

 sweet, A'ervain, elder, Indian tobacco, grindelia, dandelion, 

 colt's-foot, purple cone-flower, boneset and squaw-weed. All 

 the foregoing are standard drugs. There is another list of 

 plants that on occasion may be substituted for' them among 

 which we find sweet flag, Indian turnip, skunk-cabbage, 

 water lily, hepatica, moonseed, celandine, agrimony, Jersey- 

 tea, ginseng, trailing arbutus, milkweed, Collinsonia, mother- 

 wort, pennyrdyal, partridge berry, Joe-Pye-weed, rosin- 

 weed, ragweed and yarrow. Clearly the protectiion of 

 plants is rather more complicated than the mere securing of 

 laws prohibiting the picking of wildflowers. 



No Crop Failure in 4000 Years. — The arguments in 

 favor of diversified farming as against a single crop system 

 would vanish if theie were any way to prevent that single 

 crop from failing. No way to do this has been found, yet 

 it is remarkable that lower Mesopotamia has operated prac- 

 tically on the single crop system for at least 4000 years, and 

 probably for centuries longer, without the record of one crop 

 failure. Mesopotamia's crop is dates which not only forms 

 the staple food of the people but is that country's chief ex- 

 port. Since early biblical days the date palm has been care- 

 fully cultivated there and writings on the subject that have 

 been carefully preserved on brick tablets prove how much 

 scientific knowledgs the date growers of those early times 

 liad gained. It was to water these date palms, that the first 

 irrigation system known to man was devised. — National 

 Nurseryman. 



