154 Geranium maculatuniu 
extensive geographical range. It is abundant in the neighbourhood 
of this city, and I have found it equally common in Jersey, the 
counties of Lancaster and York, in Pennsylvania, and in the neigh- 
bourhood of Baltimore. But it will be found plentifully from Ca- 
nada to the southern boundary of the United States. It inhabits 
copices, hedges, the borders of damp woods, and the skirts of fields, 
generally preferring low grounds, though I have seen it on high 
hills. Its common height is from twelve to eighteen inches: but in 
very favourable situations it grows to the stature of two and an half 
feet, and is then one of the most beautiful of our native plants. 
. 
MEDICAL PROPERTIES. 
The medicinal virtues of Geranium maculatum, reside, ex- 
clusively, in the root, and these entitle the plant to be ranged under 
the head of Astringents, in the Materia Medica. After saying thus 
much, it may seem unnecessary to enter into a detail of the par- 
ticular diseases in which it has been recommended. The encomi- 
_ astic and sometimes ill founded accounts of the medical virtues of a 
plant, which may have become the particular object of the favour or 
partiality of an individual physician, too frequently savour of em- 
piricism ; and in fact the exaggerated reports of the specific powers 
of medicines have not only done much harm, but never fail to 
bring into actual disrepute, the subject which “ied were designed 
