1881. | - Botanical Notes Jrom Tucson. 98 
the other with the greatest ease. Then your hat will be scraped 
off, your face will be scratched, and you will feel like saying 
something wicked. You think you see a bird sitting ona nest 
in one of the trees, and at the risk of your neck climb up to it, 
only to find it empty. When you reach the ground again, it is 
with a dozen thorns in your leg, more in your hands, and your 
face and neck bleeding from scratches. Should you try to sit 
down, you will find yourself located on a patch of ground already 
occupied by thousands of the sharpest kind of thorns; by this 
time you will probably have come to the conclusion that a mes- 
quite patch is no place for a picnic and you vacate the premises. . 
_ Associated with the Acacia greggii, with yellow flowers in 
racemes, and long and crooked pods, is the Acacia farnesiana, a 
shrub from six to ten feet high, bearing great numbers of small 
yellow balls of flowers, which are very sweet scented. It is 
largely cultivated in China for the sake of the flowers, for out of 
them is made a delicious perfume. The creosote plant, Larrea 
mexicana, is very abundant on the deserts about Tucson, but a 
more worthless plant it would probably be difficult to find. Tor- 
rey says it is used externally for rheumatism; but no animal 
Seems to feed upon it, and it is useless for fuel, for it can scarcely 
_ be made to burn! It has been the subject of much discussion in 
- California, and papers read before the Academy of Natural Sci- 
ences say that it produces such quantities of “lac dye,” that a 
profitable business could be carried on by collecting and export- 
ing it, As far as I have observed in examining a large number 
of bushes, a very small proportion only produces the material for 
the dye, and these in such small quantities as to make it hardly 
worth the trouble of gathering. : 
Still another very common and at the same time a very curious 
plant is the Fouguiera splendens, one of the Tamariscinez, and 
known to the Mexicans as “ochotilla.” It grows all over the deserts — 
of Arizona and among the rocks on the mountains. The branches 
are long and whip-like, armed with innumerable sharp, curved : 
thorns an inch or more long. The flowers are of a bright scarlet, — 
and form racemes at the ends of the branches. The leaves are three- 
Parted, sessile, and generally appear after the flowers have gone. 
It is used very extensively by the Mexicans for fences, and often- 
times one sees a fence of this plant, the pieces stuck into the 
: Torrey’s Report in Emory’s Reconnoissance of N. Mex. and Cal., p. 138. 
