WESTERN SNEEZEWEED AS A POISONOUS PLANT. 45 



to recognize the plant and to avoid any extended grazing upon it. 

 It must be remembered that H. hoopesii does not ordinarily produce 

 acute cases, but is a cumulative poison with permanent effects. 

 If the herder waits until his flock begins to show symptoms of sick- 

 ness before removing them from grazing on the plant, he has waited 

 too long. His flock is more or less permanently injured, and recovery 

 after removal to another range will be only partial. It is essential 

 that he should anticipate the trouble. It is not true, of course, that 

 sheep can not be grazed at all where H. hoopesii is present, but if the 

 range is so overgrazed that other forage is scarce and the H. hoopesii 

 is abundant, the sheep will eat this plant. When the herder perceives 

 that this condition exists, the animals should be moved before cases of 

 sickness occur. It is recognized that on some ranges change of loca- 

 tion may be difficult, but whether difficult or not it must be done if 

 the flocks are to be preserved from loss. The continued grazing of 

 flocks on H. hoopesii is a dangerous custom, and may reasonably be 

 expected to have disastrous results. It should be remembered, too, 

 that these results do not consist simply in immediate losses, but that 

 such flocks are permanently injured and weakened, and lessened in 

 value for succeeding years. 



Especial care should be used in trailing sheep from one range to 

 another. Where definite trails are laid out and many sheep pass over 

 them, overgrazing results, and H. hoopesii may be practically the 

 only remaining plant. Such trails should be avoided whenever pos- 

 sible, and when they must be used, care should be taken that the 

 animals are well fed before entering them. If they pass through 

 them when hungry, they naturally eat what they can get, and hungry 

 animals on a trail eat with especial eagerness. 



SUMMARY. 



1. The western sneezeweed, Helenium (Dugaldia) hoopesii, has be- 

 come very abundant on some of the more elevated and overgrazed 

 stock ranges of the West, especially in Utah. 



2. The plant has been proved to be the cause of the disease of sheep 

 known as the "spewing sickness" and has also been shown to be 

 poisonous to cattle. 



3. The symptoms produced by the plant, the pathology, and the 

 toxic dosage have been worked out in detail, and it has been shown 

 that a permanent, injurious effect may be produced upon the animals 

 eating any considerable quantity of it. 



4. The study of the habits of the plant and experimental work on 

 methods of control have shown that little can be accomplished by 

 attempts at extermination, and that restoration of the range by 

 growth of other plants is an exceedingly slow process. 



