POISONOUS PLANTS 159 



tinctly in threes, had hitherto been the only plant 

 that said "Hands off!" to her. 



A man of affairs, also the maker of a country 

 home, imbued with the love of wild nature and 

 the desire to reestablish the plants that had once 

 lived in a strip of lovely river woods and wild 

 meadows that he owned, set out many hundred 

 plants of Mountain Laurel and Wild Rhododendron 

 one Autumn. A mild day early the next Spring 

 made him think that his young Jersey cows would 

 enjoy an airing outside of the protected winter 

 stock -yard; so he dropped the bars between the 

 cultivated and the wild. The cows trooped out 

 eagerly enough, and seized the evergreen Laurels, 

 the only green sprigs in sight. In a few hours, 

 my friend, as an agriculturist, was blaming his 

 thoughtlessness and regretting the despoiling of 

 his shrubs. That night the fine young cows were 

 discovered lying on their stable floor, seemingly 

 blind, breathing with labor, and all in some of 

 the various stages of drowsiness and stupor that 

 precede death by poison. 



Then that young man, after he had returned 

 from a four -mile race on horseback for the veteri- 

 nary surgeon, and had stayed up all night obeying 

 his peremptory orders, buried his best cow the next 



