ANDROMEDA MARIANA. STAGGER-BUSH. 187 



only retained as a section of the genus Andromeda, and does 

 not even comprise our species. 



Tlie Andromeda Mariana was well known to our earlier 

 botanists. Plukenet refers to it as a " Maryland shrub, with 

 the leaves of a Euonymus and the flowers of an Arbutus," not 

 an unapt description. It was also among the plants sent by 

 Clayton to Gronovius, and according to Alton it was first 

 introduced into England, in a living state, in 1736, by Peter 

 Collinson, in whose garden it was cultivated. 



Although so beautiful as a flower, our species has rather an 

 uncertain reputation. Dr. Darlington says, in his " Flora 

 Cestrica": "This shrub is very common in New Jersey, where 

 the farmers think it is injurious to sheep, when eaten by them, 

 producing a disease called the sfaggers." This popular belief 

 has riven to the Andromeda Jlfariaita its common name, which 

 is Staecer-Bush, a fact for which we are rather sorry, as it is 

 probable that the plant is not so injurious as it has been sup- 

 posed to be. Careful investigator that he was. Dr. Darlington 

 himself expressed some doubts as to its noxiousness, in his 

 "Agricultural Botany." Dr. Peyre Porcher, however, is also 

 suspicious of the species. He says that " the honey which the 

 bees extract from these flowers is slightly poisonous," and refers 

 to " Nicholson's Journal " as his authority. Similar charges 

 have been made against the Azalea, RJwdodendron , and Kalmia, 

 all of them cricaceous plants, and it is barely jDossiblc that the 

 suspicion has been transferred from one of these plants to 

 the other, without any very special foundation. Dr. Gray, in 

 his recently published " Synoptical Flora," as well as in his 

 "Manual," remarks that it is said to be poisonous to "lambs 

 and calves," but he does not include " sheep," to which, accord- 

 ing to popular belief, as we have seen, it is said to be specially 

 injurious. 



In regard to its medicinal qualities, we are informed by Dr. 

 Titford, in his " Hortus Botanicus Americanus," that the Andro- 

 meda Mariana "is a cure for the ground or toe-itch." Dr. 



