EXTRACTS FROM AGRICULTURAL REPORTS. 
555 
can see nothing is as apt to leap toward a wall or a man as in 
any other direction. Anything that excites him appears to induce 
such fits, which are perhaps more apt to occur in crossing water 
than elsewhere, and the animal sometimes falls so exhausted as to 
drown in water not over two feet deep. He loses flesh from the 
first, and presents the appearance of a skeleton. Nutritive energy 
seems to be paralyzed. In the last stage lie only goes from loco 
to water and back. His gait is feeble and uncertain; eyes 
sunken, flat and glassy; his coat rough and lusterless, and in gen¬ 
eral the animal seems to suffer from starvation and constant ex¬ 
citement of the nervous system. Sometimes also he appears to 
experience acute pain, causing him to run from place to place, 
paw and roll until he falls, and then dies in a few moments. A 
correspondent from Texas states, “ he cannot tell when a horse is 
4 locoed ’ until he drives him very hard. After becoming heated 
he begins to be excited, and then the peculiar effect of loco ap¬ 
pears.” 
There are two plants known as crazy weed, common in Kan¬ 
sas, Colorado and New Mexico—the Astragalus mollissimus , and 
Oxytropis Lamberti , both belonging to the natural order Legu- 
minosse. E. A. Fopenoe, Manhattan, states he has received from 
different parts, as specimens of crazy weed, besides the above, the 
following: Afalvastrum coccbieum , Sophora sericea , and Amar- 
antus albus; but the writer has found from personal investiga^ 
tion that the farmers of our own and adjacent States mean by 
this title, “ crazy weed,” one or other of the two species above 
mentioned. Both the Astragalus and Oxytropis are rather attrac¬ 
tive plants, and keep their color all winter. 
The Astragalus grows on high ground and rather dry soil 
which is also gravelly and sandy. It blooms about June, and 
bears a bright-colored flower, rather attractive in its appearance. 
There are a great many stalks proceeding from the base. These 
stalks are compressed, reclining toward the base, and erect and 
recurved above, subcaulescent, with soft, silky, villous pubescence. 
The leaflets usually in pairs, except the upper one (composed of 
from ten to twenty pairs), are somewhat densely clothed with 
soft, silky hairs, more woolly on the underside. The flower-stalk 
