82 TEPHROSIA VIRGINIANA. VIRGINIAN GOATS-RUE; HOARY PEA. 



only that our plant is found in abundance, for it is frequently 

 met with in wild, uncultivated places from Canada to Florida, 

 west to the Mississippi River, and even beyond, in Arkansas and 

 Texas, to some extent. It varies, however, in some of these dis- 

 tricts ; so much, indeed, that several species have been made out' 

 of it. The leaves change somewhat in these different places, 

 both in form and hairiness, being sometimes nearly smooth. 

 The color of the flowers is also darker in some places than in 

 others. In Michigan, according to Mr. N. Coleman, the two 

 outer petals are almost green. 



The silky appearance of the leaves of some of the earliest 

 known species suggested the botanical name Tephrosia, " te- 

 phros " being Greek for " ashen gray," which is the appearance 

 these silky-haired leaves present ; our species exhibits the same 

 characteristic, almost as much so as those which gave the family 

 name. In the time of Linneeus, however, it was not known as 

 Tcphrosia, but 2iS.Galega Virgmiana, under which name it must 

 be looked for in the earlier botanical works. The original 

 Galcga officmalis has been left almost alone, the greater part of 

 the many scores of species which once formed that genus being 

 given to its newer-born rival, Tephrosia, chiefly on account of 

 their flat pods or seed-vessels, for the original Galcga has them 

 almost torulose or round. Besides this the vexillum or standard, 

 as the upper petal is called, is longer in Galega than in Tephrosia. 



The separation from Galcga has deprived our plant of much 

 of its early family history, for G. officinalis was the common 

 " Goat's-Rue " of the early writers. Rue itself is another plant, 

 and was used by the old monks to drive away evil spirits that, 

 without proper reason, insisted on bothering mankind. An 

 old writer tells us that these Satanic imps held in utter detesta- 

 tion holy water, Rue, and some other things. The Galcga was 

 not called Goat's-Rue, however, because it served goats as its 

 namesake served evil spirits (as many persons who want to have 

 gardens where others want goats might well wish), but rather 

 from a slio-ht resemblance in the leaves to the true Rue. The 



