VARIOUS FARM PRODUCTS 571 



the live-stock business by this weed is immense. This genus contains 

 a large number of species, and it is quite probable that many of these 

 should be considered to be poisonous where they grow over wide 

 areas of pasture land, and are green at periods when there is but little 

 green grass. Over a half dozen have been reported to the Department 

 of Agriculture as highly detrimental to the stock industry. 



Stemless Loco Weed (Aragallus lambertii). Loco weed; crazy 

 weed; Colorado loco vetch. This differs from the true loco weed 

 most conspicuously in its more erect and branchless habit, its longer 

 leaflets, which are linear or oblong instead of ovate, and the one-celled 

 seed pod. It ranges over the same territory as does the woolly loco 

 weed, but extends farther, being found throughout the Great Plains 

 from British America to Mexico, and it also ascends higher in the 

 mountains, growing luxuriantly at Silver Cliff, in Colorado, at an 

 altitude of about 8,000 feet. 



So far as has been observed, the symptoms of poisoning are 

 identical with those produced by the preceding species. The two 

 plants are considered to be equally prejudicial to the stock-raising 

 interests of New Mexico. 



Rattlebox (Crotalaria sagittalis). Rattleweed; wild pea. A 

 hairy annual, 3 to 18 inches high, with simple undivided leaves, 1 to 

 2 inches long, and small, yellow, pea-like flowers appearing in July. 

 The seed pods are about an inch in length when mature, and are 

 nearly black. They are much inflated, and as the walls are stiff and 

 thin and very resonant, they make excellent miniature rattles when 

 the seeds have become detached from their fastenings inside the pod. 

 The rattlebox is native in low, sandy soils from the Atlantic west- 

 ward to Minnesota and eastern Kansas; also in New Mexico. It is 

 common in Connecticut, New Jersey, and North Carolina, and in 

 some years is very abundant in bottom lands along the valley of the 

 Missouri, in South Dakota, and Iowa. The poisonous constituent is 

 unknown, but it resides both in the leaves ^and in the seeds. Horses, 

 and sometimes cattle, are killed by eating grass or meadow hay mixed 

 with the plant. They are not poisoned so often by eating the plant 

 in the field. Public attention was first called to the poisonous nature 

 of rattlebox by Dr. Stalker, of Iowa, who in 1884, while investigat- 

 ing the cause of "bottom disease," then prevalent among horses in 

 Iowa, was led to believe that it was mostly if not altogether attribut- 

 able to this plant. Experiments were made which proved the sup- 

 position to be correct. As generally described from accidental cases, 

 the symptoms are much prolonged, death resulting only after several 

 weeks or months. There is a general decline of vigor and a gradual 

 loss of flesh, as observed in the case of loco, with which this plant 

 is closely related. The rattlebox does not, however, appear so often 

 to produce the craziness characteristic of loco. 



Caper Spurge (Euphorbia lathyris). Garden spurge; myrtle 

 spurge; mole plant; mole weed; mole tree; gopher plant; antigophet 

 plant; wild caper; caper bush; wolf's milk; springwort. A smooth 

 herbaceous, milky-juiced perennial, 2 to 3 feet high, with a stiff, 

 erect stem, and opposite, four-ranked leaves, the lower of which are 



