MILLER: THE PROPAGATION OF MEDICINAL PLANTS 111 
The catalogues of the most prominent seedsmen and 
from the United States, England, France, Germany, and Sane 
have been examined for medicinal plants. In such an examination 
it was necessary to have clearly in mind some means of deciding 
whether or not a given form should be classed medicinal or non- 
medicinal. Certain limitations must be exercised in such a dis- 
tinction, and a conservative rather than a general attitude should 
be maintained. To follow the inclinations and suggestions of some 
authors would mean the consideration of an almost unlimited 
number of plants as possessing medicinal value. Practically, the 
list should not greatly exceed three hundred in number, and of 
these there are many included which are of doubtful value. In 
Bulletin No. 2, California State Board of Forestry, entitled 
“Pharmacal Plants and Their Culture,” there is a context of one 
hundred and fifty-four pages, eight of which treat of the cultiva- 
tion of medicinal plants in California. A portion of this small 
space is given up to such forms as sage, horehound, rosemary, 
marjoram, and dandelion. The greater bulk of the publication is 
taken up with a list of ‘Native and Introduced Medicinal and 
Poisonous Plants.” The inclusion in this list of such forms as sugar 
maple, box elder, maidenhair fern, common edible mushroom 
(Agaricus campestris), wind flower, columbine, pawpaw, banana, 
garden beet, clematis, persimmon, California poppy, strawberry, 
holly, lemon, puffball, sorrel, cinquefoil, yucca and even corn, 
can hardly be explained. If such plants as the foregoing are to be 
considered medicinal, the list of three hundred would quickly 
8row to six hundred or more. 
Based upon such a liberal classification, all seedsmen and 
nurserymen could be said to list medicinal plants regularly, and in 
large numbers, while as a matter of fact they list but very few. 
Certainly such a classification is not advisable, from either a practi- 
cal or a scientific standpoint. The list which has been used as a 
means of dividing this material into medicinal and non-medicinal 
contains three hundred and eighty different forms, and includes all 
those that are commonly used by prominent manufacturers of 
pharmaceutical preparations. 
