Kalmia Mountain Laurel. 3 



than numerous others of the best and most common plants 

 in our gardens. If one will go to the nurseryman instead 

 of the woods, he will find very little difficulty in this direc- 

 tion. Kalmias properly grown and trained yield as kindly 

 to removal as do most other plants, and can be handled as 

 safely. Nicholson pronounces this " one of the most 

 useful, elegant, and attractive of dwarf flowering shrubs." 

 K. angustifolia, or narrow-leaved laurel, is a low ever- 

 green plant, usually from one to three feet high, and 

 is often found growing in bunches or paths in moist or 

 low grounds, where it is deemed especially undesirable by 

 the farmer or herdsman who considers it poisonous to 

 calves or lambs. So common is this impression that in 

 many sections it is known as the lamb-kill or sheep-kill 

 plant. It is claimed by some good authorities that the 

 foliage is not poisonous at all, and that the ill effects 

 ascribed to it come from the fact that the foliage is quite 

 indigestible, and thus fatal at times to young and tender 

 animals. This is all the more probable from the fact that 

 we seldom or never hear complaints of fatalities in the 

 case of cattle or sheep of mature years, which, it is to be 

 presumed, feed on the leaves as freely as do their young. 

 In this little shrub the flowers are in lateral corymbs, and 

 in from three to twelve whorls to each spike. They are 

 purple and crimson, and appear in early summer. The 

 London Garden says that K. angustifolia should always 

 be planted in rhododendron beds so as to keep up a suc- 

 cession of flowers, and mentions three sorts which may 

 well be used for such a purpose. There are several pretty 

 varieties, one of which, the nana, makes an excellent pot 



