MISCELLANEOUS USES 



prone to satisfy their appetite for fish in this 

 manner. Such pot-hunting has now, however, for 

 many years been forbidden by law. In California 

 the bulbs of the Soap-plant (Chlorogalum pomeri- 

 dianum, already described) were mostly used, being 

 first crushed in quantity, thrown into the water, and 

 mixed with it. Next to these in popularity were the 

 macerated stems and leaves of the Turkey Mullein 

 (C rot on setigerus, Hook.), the Spanish-Calif or- 

 nians' Yerba del pescado that is, " fish- weed/' 

 This plant is a rather low-spreading, bristly-hairy, 

 grayish herb, with little greenish blossoms that are 

 scarcely noticeable. It appears in the fields and 

 plains of midsummer and remains through the 

 autumn. Hunters of wild doves know it well, as 

 these birds are very fond of the seeds and collect in 

 numbers to feed where the ' ' mullein " grows to their 

 undoing. Employed in the same way on the Atlantic 

 seaboard were the seeds of the Southern or Bed 

 Buckeye (Aesculus Pavia, L.), a tree that occurs 

 from Virginia to Florida and westward to the 

 Mississippi Valley. According to Porcher, the fresh 

 kernels were customarily macerated in water, mixed 

 with wheat-flour to form a stiff paste, and thrown 

 into pools of standing water. The dazed fish would 

 float up to the top and had then only to be picked 



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