POISONOUS PLANTS 269 



the wrong way. The breath comes with difficulty and in 

 many respects the appearance is similar to loco poisoning. 

 Post mortems show the stomachs to be very badly com- 

 pacted, the contents appearing dry and burned. 



The only known remedy is liberal doses of linseed oil 

 given as a drench and injected. One quart for a drench 

 if given early enough will bring good results, but if the 

 case is not taken in hand promptly, nothing seems to 

 do any good. It is possible that the use of a perman- 

 ganate of potash drench in such cases would give excel- 

 lent results, although it has never been tried to my 

 knowledge. When cattle begin to die of this trouble the 

 best remedy is immediately to remove them to some 

 range where the oak is not found. 



Pingue or Rubber Weed (Hymenoxys floribunda). 

 In northern New Mexico and southern Colorado in the 

 upper Rio Grande region there has been for several years 

 past more or less loss from some disease known locally 

 among the sheepmen as "pingue," from the Spanish 

 name of the plant which is presumed to be responsible 

 for the trouble. The rubber weed is a small plant, bear- 

 ing a bright yellow flower about three-fourths of an inch 

 in diameter, growing in the semi-desert ranges. Under 

 commercial treatment it produces small quantities of a 

 rather low grade of crude rubber. The story goes that 

 the way the rubber in the plant was first discovered was 

 due to the death of a ram whose stomach was opened in 

 an effort to discover the cause of death. In the animal's 

 stomach was found a mass that the investigators reported 

 to be almost pure rubber. The sheep had been eating 

 the bush or shrub, and the deductions were that the 

 rubber came from the shrub and the animal died from 

 the effects of the mass of rubber in its stomach. 



