15 
through tropical America, where some of the other species 
become large forest trees. 
Jatropha wrens, called in Mexico ‘‘Mala-mujer,” is another 
small tree or large shrub, the milky juice of which contains some 
rubber, and which is widely distributed throughout tropical 
America. The entire tree, including both leaf-surfaces, is thickly 
beset with needle-like spines, which, besides being pungent, are 
poisonously irritant. Working with this ene even for the 
making of herbarium specimens, is decidedly pai 
“Cordoban” is the local name in Oaxaca oi a very peculiar 
small shrub known to botanists as Pedilanthus Pringlei. Its 
stems grow in clumps, are little branched, mostly from one to 
two yards long, about as thick as the finger, soft and full of milk, 
nearly leafless and droop or recline on other plants. Its peculiar 
little flowers, of a coral-red, are inconspicous. It is a near 
relative of the Euphorbia. Should it ever be found practicable to 
collect its rubber, it will probably be only by grinding up the 
entire plant. 
number of miscellaneous uses of plants may now be men- 
tioned. The leaves of the palm here exhibited, ee a 
Thrinax, furnish te roofing for a large part of the poorer houses 
of Balsas and other Guerrero towns. The leaves of a Furcraea 
furnish in the same district a considerable ate of fiber for 
rough cordage. ‘‘Jaboncilla’”’ is a name applied at Gonzales to 
white foliage and large chocolate-purple flowers much like those 
of the sweet pea. It is so called because it can be used as a 
soap substitute. 
When bananas ripen and the plants are cut down, their stems 
are cut into joints about a foot long, these joints being then 
hollowed out and the tough cylinders being slipped over ripe 
pineapples to protect them during transportation. 
A small silk-cotton tree (Ceiba sp.) abounds in a large part of 
the mountainous plateau of central Mexico, and bears annually, 
in the aggregate, an enormous quantity of cotton-like fiber. 
attached, not to the seeds, as in ordinary cotton, but to the inside 
of the pod. This cotton is fine and of a beautiful silky luster, 
