THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 113 



only a few persons are susceptible. It is well known that the 

 luscious strawberry appears to be poisonous to some people, 

 but that does not prevent the rest of us from indulging in straw- 

 berry short-cake. The harm in the tomato is laid to "lyco- 

 persic acid" whatever that may be. It is supposed to be most 

 abundant in tomatoes that have been picked green and ripened 

 on the way to market and the moral of all this is that one 

 should eat only fresh tomatoes, and the inference that he 

 should grow them himself. If the fact that some people's 

 hearts are affected by stale tomatoes induces every man to 

 make a garden, we shall welcome the discovery of "lyco- 

 persic acid." 



Japanese Air Plant. — Whether or not. as P. T. Bar- 

 num averred, the public like to be humbugged, it is pretty cer- 

 tain that most people stand in grave danger of being duped be- 

 cause of their ignorance of botany. Last autumn, at a country 

 fair the writer came upon a \endor of the "rose of Jericho" 

 which was nothing else than our well-known "resurrection 

 fern {Selaginella lepidophylla). The specimens were highly 

 perfumed and the dealer was loud in his praises of the "large 

 red flowers" which he asserted they produced. Pressed for 

 further information in the writer's most guileless manner, the 

 dealer enlarged upon the merits of his wares, telling how they 

 grew in a remote part of South America and were imported 

 with great difficulty. When skepticism about the large red 

 flower was expressed, the dealer insisted that he had seen one 

 in bloom within the week, that its perfume could be smelled 

 for several blocks and offered to forfeit ten dollars if they 

 could not be smelled that far when they bloomed! But, alas, 

 the Selaginella never does bloom. Many people, however, 

 paid twenty-five cents for a specimen of the wonderful plant. 

 Evidently this humbug is about worked out for we begin to 

 find a new creation offered as the Japanese air-plant. This is a 

 small deep green moss-like plant that is said to live entirely 



