194 



KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



BILIOGRAPHY OF THE LOCO WEED. 



By L. E. Saiee, Uniyersity of Kansas, Lawrence. 

 Read before the Academy, at Manhattan, November 26, 1903. 



I^^HERE are perhaps few plants of the vegetable kingdom that have 

 - excited more interest of a general character than that of the As- 

 tragalus mollissimus. This is due to its alleged property of produc- 

 ing, when eaten by animals, a condition which is known as "locoism"; 

 this term being derived from the Spanish word loco, meaning crazy, 

 hence the common name of "crazy weed." We have been interested 

 in compiling the various papers concerning this weed, and present 

 herewith to the Academy a bibliography, so far as we have been 

 able to obtain data, original papers, etc. 



We desire to state in this connection that during the past year we 

 have endeavored to ascertain the food value of loco. Our own lab- 

 oratory results pointed to the fact that if the plant was not poisonous 

 it would not be a bad stock food, but for confirmation of our results 

 we had authentic material collected, such as the animal feeds upon, 

 derived from the Astragalus mollissimus (loco) and sent to the de- 

 partment of agriculture at Manhattan, and through the kindness of 

 J. T. Willard, of the chemical laboratory, we have the following re- 

 port of the analysis : 



Crude protein 14 . 73 per cent. 



Ether extract 2.31 



Nitrogen-free extract 40.22 



Crude fiber 30 .39 



Moisture 6 . 51 



Ash 5.84 



For the purpose of comparison, we tabulate the analyses of well- 

 known foodstufifs. These analyses were taken from the reports of the 

 Experimental Station of Kansas and those of the Department of 

 Agriculture, at Washington. The figures represent average compo- 

 sition. 



