POISONOUS PLANTS 259 



animals soon after. However, the matter has recently 

 been carefully investigated by the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture, with the result that the poison 

 in the plant has been separated and identified, and fol- 

 lowing this remedies have been tried which have re- 

 sulted in complete cures of animals badly locoed, leav- 

 ing no injurious after effects. Thus the contentions of 

 the practical stockmen have been completely sustained 

 by the scientific investigators. 



While the eating of loco is found to affect horses, 

 cattle, sheep and goats, it is among horses that the most 

 damage is done. It is only occasionally that there is 

 what is known as a "loco year," during which sheep 

 and cattle die from eating it. But horses die every year 

 when the plant is plentiful. This I have always ac- 

 counted for by the fact that the horse is not a browsing 

 animal. The green loco appeals more to him in the 

 early spring when there is little green feed than to the 

 other stock which, being browsing animals, find in the 

 young buds of the trees and shrubs and the weed 

 growth something to take the place of the loco. 



The spring of 1888 was a bad loco season in northern 

 Arizona, and thousands of locoed horses and cattle 

 died. The winter previous was unusually wet, with 

 heavy rains in the early spring, and long before the 

 first shoots of young grass showed above the ground 

 the loco was spreading its beautiful growth all over the 

 ranges. 



One peculiarity of the losses among the cattle was 

 that the better grades, the imported stock, were more 

 easily affected than the common scrubs. Whether this 

 was due to the superior instinct of the western-raised 

 animal cannot of course be proved, but it is not very 



