FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1867, and 

 recommended as being veiy efficient in promoting 

 digestion. A chemist at Melbourne also prepares 

 cigarettes from the foliage, which he urges to be 

 employed in bronchial and asthmatic affections. In 

 Mauritius the leaves are sold at sixpence per ounce 

 to make an infusion which has been administered 

 with success in malarious fevers ; ] and, as a reward for 

 all these virtues, as a return for such beneficent work 

 on behalf of humanity, this tree is now being dis- 

 tributed almost over the habitable globe, wherever 

 the white man's foot has trodden. 



The sunflower has a reputation similar to that 

 of the Australian gum-tree. " The Observatory at 

 Washington, U. S., was placed in a very unhealthy 

 marshy situation, and at certain periods of the 

 year fever was rife in the neighbourhood, but 

 after the ground was annually sown with sunflower 

 the sanitary condition was much improved." It is 

 also stated by the same authority 3 as that of the 

 above fact, that "a Dutch landed proprietor upon 

 the banks of the Scheldt, planted some plots of 

 sunflowers near his houses, and that the tenants 

 enjoyed afterwards complete immunity from mias- 



' " Lancet," April 20, 1872. 



3 " Gardener's Chronicle," Nov. 22 (1873), pp. 15, 67. 



