296 PITTONIA. 
naturally aloof from all other Composite. Lobelia wrens 
and Lactuca virosa of the Old World are well known 
exponents of the property referred to; and Father Feuillée’s 
account of the effect of inhaling the odor of Lobelia Tupa’ 
might be repeated concerning one of our commonest Cali- 
fornian Cichoriaces, Rafinesquia, a rank lettuce-like weed of 
the bushy hill-sides, from the odor of which, when perchance 
I have bruised the herbage with my foot, I am obliged to 
retreat for my head and stomach’s sake. ‘ 
Cattle and horses, whether they find in these plants a pala- 
table nutritive, a soothing narcotic or some remedial virtue, 
often devour them with greed; and the instinct or appetite 
leads them to feed without any discrimination upon either 
the lobelia or lettuce worts. I have repeatedly observed 
small lobelias and coarse sonchus and stephanomeria cropped 
closely, where other well known forage plants were not at all 
kept down in that way by the ruminants at large upon the 
ground. On the Island of Santa Cruz I observed that, under 
circumstances of some dearth of Cichoriaces, and a total 
absence of the Lobeliaces, Rafinesquia, notwithstanding its 
extremely nauseating odor, and probable virulent qualities, 
had been browsed upon quite freely by the sheep. If there 
had been on this island any marshes or brook-sides with 
lobelias, it is undoubted in my mind, the sheep would have 
preferred them. 
In that hardly definable, but if delicate yet most certain 
index of consanguinity which we call habit, the Lobeliacez 
and Cichoriacem are ver y much alike. On the Pacific side of 
North America where the latter superabound, the resem- 
blance is often very close, so much so that some species when 
not in flower or fruit might easily be referred to the wrong 
family. A few summers since, while botanizing up along a 
streamlet of the mountains near Santa Barbara, I found the 
moist bauk all at once covered over with the stubbly remnants 
of a leafy herb which the cattle had eaten off, in preference 
*“Tts root yieldeth a deadly milk, as also doth its stem; the odor of 
its flowers produceth cruel sickness." Bot. t. Reg. under t. 1612. 
