MISCELLANEOUS USES 



found favor. The ingredients of the "smoke" were 

 first thoroughly dried either in the sun or over a 

 fire, and then rubbed and crumbled between the 

 palm of the hand — ^whence the French engages' 

 name, hois roule, applied to such smoking material. 

 Though a portion of tobacco was usual in the make- 

 up, it frequently was omitted — one or more of the 

 non-narcotics being consumed alone. 



When our attention is once turned to utilizing 

 what is growing freely around us, an almost 

 exhaustless subject of remarkable fascination has 

 been started ; and the folk of simple habits and gifted 

 with some ingenuity find Flora a ministrant goddess 

 of very varied gifts. There is almost nothing we 

 can ask of her that she cannot make some sort of 

 response to. Lovers of the curious may have napkin 

 rings or candle-sticks from sections of the reticulated 

 wooden skeleton of the savage ChoUa Cactus; com- 

 bination brushes for sweeping the floor or brushing 

 the hair (according to the end used) from certain 

 western grasses ; ^ combs of pine-cones ; buttons of 

 acorn-cups; tooth-brushes of the Flowering Dog- 



8 One, given me by a Zufii Indian, is a simple bunch of Muhlen- 

 tergia pungens, Thurb., tied about with a string, the butt-end 

 charred to serve for the hairbrush, the other doing duty as a 

 whisk. Harrington states that among the Tewa of New Mexico and 

 Arizona, the plant used for this double purpose is the Mesquite- 

 grass (Bouteloua curtipendula, Torr.). 



231 



