435 



produced in enormous quantities in the early spring. They are 

 eaten by cattle and horses, and are nutritious. The pods have also 

 been used as a vegetable. Besides these innocuous species, the 

 genus contains a number which have attained wide notoriety as 

 loco weeds, poisonous to stock, the worst and most widely dis- 

 tributed one being A. mollissimus. Many of the species are worthy 

 of cultivation. 



FIG. 3. Buffalo pea (Astragalus adsurpens] 



Antriplex canescens (Shad scale. Fig. 4). A perennial shrub 

 of the pigweed or saltbush family, often attaining a height of ten 

 feet, native in the higher valleys and mesas or table-lands of New 

 Mexico and Arizona. The leaves and small twigs are eaten by 

 cattle, which grow fat upon them, but are said to give a bad taste 

 to milk. It is the principal forage plant of a wide range of territory 

 in the south-west, and deserves to be more widely distributed and 

 brought into cultivation, especially on saline or alkaline soils. 



