EUPHORBIA MARGINATA.—SNOW ON THE MOUNTAIN. 79 
attractive to the traveller over these far western railroads, as it 
is in its best dress only along the lines where the soil has been 
disturbed. 
Mr. James Vick, the well-known florist, and enthusiastic 
admirer of flowers, passing over one of these railroads across 
Kansas soon after its opening, was struck by its novel appear- 
ance, and thus wrote home about it: “This Luphorbca mar- 
ginata is a very pretty annual, making a plant, in the newly dis- 
turbed soil, of nearly two feet in height, and having the appear- 
ance of a shrub or a miniature tree. The largest of the leaves 
are nearly two inches in length, growing smaller as they approach 
the tops of the branches. The leaves are of a very pretty light 
green, surrounded by a margin of clear snowy white, on the 
large leaves merely a line, becoming wider as the leaves get 
smaller, until the smallest are nearly or quite pure white, as are 
also the flower bracts. It grows abundantly, and is called by 
the people here ‘Snow on the Mountain,’ and we thought this a 
very appropriate name.” ‘The florist is not alone in paying trib- 
ute to its natural beauty ; even the botanist often pauses to express 
his admiration of that element in this flower, though beauty has 
no recognized place in his systems of classifications. Thus Mr. 
Burgess, in the note already referred to, speaks of the dazzling 
splendor of certain plants growing over the “rarely carved 
Bluffs,” among which he especially notes our plant as “strug- 
gling up the side, over the summit at last!” The “Botanical 
Gazette,” 
“It seemed to make its appearance quite suddenly at Madison a 
in speaking of its existence at Madison, Indiana, says: 
few years ago, but is spreading with wonderful rapidity, covering 
only such hills and parts of hills as have been cleared of timber, 
and are covered with sand or gravel. It ranges over many acres 
of the hilly ground, and is creeping slowly to the level ground. 
Its milky juice is very abundant, and may some day yield in its 
gum, to investigating industry, an ample return for its cultivation. 
Those who have occasion, however, to handle it, had better not 
do so with abraded skin, and should be careful not to convey any 
