l888.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 108 



mucuous membrane of the nose, and the immediate air-passages 

 become super-sensitive. In fact the entire mucous surface is 

 soon in a scalded state, and every nerve-ending is a participant 

 of torture. Suppose a person's back to be in that state of 

 eczema, in which inflammation has reached suppuration, and a 

 thistle-bur to be put down the back. The rest may be left to 

 imagination. Now suppose that a number of grains of pollen of 

 Rag-weed, or Golden-rod, with which the air is laden, to be 

 inhaled, when the whole nasal region and the ducts beyond are 

 scalded with the incessant discharge of acrid secretions. Is not 

 each one of these infinitesimal teasels a lacerator of the tender 

 and inflamed membrane ? Hence when these enter in myriads 

 — what a combination for exquisite torture ! I have been 

 caught in a place where Rag-weed pollen was prevalent in the 

 air, and have been seized with sudden spasms, so violent that I 

 have had to cling to a fence for support under suffering that 

 was inexpressible. 



3. — Besides being a mechanical irritant because of the spines, 

 I am persuaded that pollen has a toxic quality in Hay-Fever. 

 In plainer words it poisons the already inflamed tissues of the 

 respiratory passages. No one doubts that, to some persons, 

 skin-poisoning is a certainty, upon walking on the lee-side of the 

 toxic Sumach, Rhus venenata, in its flowering time. Why not 

 then a toxic effect of pollen upon the mucous linings already 

 super-sensitive, and even lacerated by their presence ? 



In the old herbals the Solidago, as the word almost implies, 

 had a reputation for vulnerable virtues, it being used in treating 

 wounds. One of the species, .9. odorata, yields an aromatic oil, 

 on distillation. It cannot then, I think, be inert upon the sur- 

 face of the inflamed, and minutely lacerated mucous membrane. 



The laceration facilitates the poisoning. But there is another 

 possibility in this matter. The copious nasal secretions, acrid 

 and warm — have they no power for extracting the toxic princi- 

 ple ? 



4. — And, lastly, I am constrained to believe that pollen, in 

 ^stivis, is a vital automaton — that it can, as a living organ- 

 ism, perforate the mucous lining, actuated on the principle of a 

 pseudo-instinct ; not altogether unlike the Carrion-fly, when it 

 deposits its eggs, by mistake, on the decaying, nitrogenous 



