TBE PLANT WORLD. 127 



Many good Americans who admire and cultivate the white calla 

 of the florist shops — an African plant — ai-e quite ignorant that the 

 cool northern bogs of their own country produce in abundance a native 

 calla which is quite as charming. This wuld calla [0. pcdvstris) is 

 much smaller than the green house species, and the white spathe in- 

 stead of being funnel shaped, is rather flat and quaintly dented with 

 a number of depressions about the size of pinheads, which seem as 

 though they might have been made by the points of the pistils before 

 the spathe unwrapped itself. Though abundant in bogs from Penn- 

 sylvania northward and west to the Mississippi River, it is easily over- 

 looked because of its habitat being rather inaccessible except to rub- 

 ber-booted explorers. — C. F. Saunders. 



"Much of the aconite of ccmimerce, that finds its way to Europe, 

 is gathered on this mountain [Sandook-phu, in the eastern Himalayas. 

 The name means in the Bhotiya or Thibetan language 'The Hill of the 

 Poison-plant or Aconite"]; and I have found the Bhotiyas in the 

 autumn, digging up the roots wholesale for transport to Calcutta. 

 They pay a small fee to the Rajah of Sikhim for this privilege, arnd 

 they get from the native dealers of Darjeeling about fourteen shillings 

 for three-quarters of a hundred weight of the dried roots. There are 

 several species of the plant growing here, including the greenish A. 

 pahiiatum and the deeper blue, the virulent ^1. ferox that is exported 

 for its poison, and which Hooker says is merely variety of the monks- 

 hood {A. najyellas), of our gardens at home. 



The root is also extensively employed throughout the Eastern 

 Himalayas to poison the arrows that are used after big game and in 

 warfare, as our troops found in the expeditions against the Sikhimese, 

 and also the Abov and Aka tribes of Assam." — Waddell in Among 

 the ILhnalaycm. 



