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and autumn. And now it appears that to be beautiful is not 
its only mission in life; under the name Balsamea it is used 
by the Spanish,and by others who have learned its value 
from them, to heal cuts and other sores whether old or new, 
especially on horses. It is applied as a wash and afterward 
the powdered leaves are sifted over the affected part. 
If nature places the disease and the remedy in juxtaposition, 
as it is averred she does in the case of rattlesnakes and 
Daucus pusillus, then every wire fence should have its 
cordon of Zauschneria; for it is particularly for the modern 
disease known as “cut terribly on a wire fence” that this 
plant has the reputation of being a specific. 
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Indefinite stamens and subsessile pods in Cleome. 
Wuen De Condolle in 1824 took up the Capparidee in his 
Prodromus, and recognized Polanisia as a genus, he knew 
but few species, and seems to have relied solely on definite 
stamens for Cleome and indefinite ones for Polanisia. It 
seems that this character holds good for the North Ameri- 
can plants; and when we think of the perfect validity of this 
character in Crucifere, we are led naturally into attaching 
undue importance to it: in connection with the capparids. 
When in 1855 and 1856, I travelled widely with Gregory in 
tropic Australia, I had ep sartdnity to observe that in Cleome 
tetrandra, while the stamens are never numerous, they are 
often more than four, and that in C. owalidea they vary 
between six and eight; I have therefore since that time sup- 
pressed Polanisia in my writings. In this I was followed by 
so careful and accurate an observer as Prof. Oliver, on far 
more extensive material from tropic Africa, in 1868; his 
Cleome Bororensis having from six to ten stamens. Even De 
Candolle did not consider the stipe of the fruit as a character 
of generic value in this family; and Martius,in the Flora 
Brasiliensis (1865), has on his fine plates C. paludosa, C. 
