158 POISONOUS PLANTS 



three years ago that the United States Department 

 of Agriculture, itself continually reminded of the 

 importance of the matter by reports of the real 

 and oftentimes merely alleged cases of plant poison- 

 ing sent to it, gathered such statistics as were 

 provable, and through the medium of a Farmers' 

 Bulletin, V. R. Chestnut's concise summary of the 

 "Thirty Poisonous Plants of the United States" 

 was issued. But widely as the pamphlet was 

 distributed, it has failed to reach many of the 

 very people to whom it would be of the greatest 

 use, the increasing band of nature lovers, tak- 

 ing the wood path perhaps for the first time, 

 to find bird, flower, and fern in their haunts, 

 and also the ardent amateur farmer, both male and 

 female. 



Flower Hat never dreamed of evil, when one 

 day in following me along a narrow road between 

 wet meadows and woods, she broke off a branch 

 from a harmless -looking shrub to use for brushing 

 away the gnats. In a few hours, however, her 

 mischievous gray eyes were closed tight, her face 

 looked as if it had been in collision with a hive 

 of very angry bees, and Poison Sumac was literally 

 branded in her memory. Poison Ivy, with its hairy 

 climbing stem and compound leaves, growing dis- 



