Larkspur and Other Poisonous Plants. 
BY GKO. H. GLOVER. 
According to the last statistics, there are something over $50,- 
000,000 invested in live stock in the State of Colorado. The old 
open range conditions still prevail to some extent, and many of the 
vexatious problems which have hampered this industry from its 
inception remain unsolved. 
I deem it no presumption to say that there is no place on the 
face of the earth where the live stock industry flourishes less hamp¬ 
ered by disease, contagious or otherwise, than in the salubrious 
climate of the arid west. 
Not one of the great animal scourges that have decimated .the 
herds of the Orient for centuries, and some of which have in the 
past reached our eastern shores, have ever found their way west 
of the Mississippi river, thanks to an eternal vigilance on the part 
of the Federal and State authorities. The loss we suffer is not great 
from any one specific cause, but in the aggregate become a heavy 
burden. 
It has been estimated that the loss from poisoning of stock 
on the open range in the State of Montana is at least $100,000 an¬ 
nually. In this State it must be nearly or quite as great. The 
value of the animals actually lost does not, however, 
begin to represent the loss actually sustained by the industry be¬ 
cause of the presence of a few species of poisonous weeds. In 
many sections of this State ranchers have given up in despair and 
been forced to abandon otherwise ideal ranges. The animal mor¬ 
tality, combined with the injury done to those animals not actually 
destroyed, have curtailed the profits until the owner at last is forced 
into bankruptcy and the ranges are abandoned. 
Until the last few years no systematic effort has been made 
to investigate these poisonous plants of the western ranges.. Their 
identity, poisonous nature, and remedy was simply a matter of 
common report among the stockmen. 
In 1901 the U. S. Department of Agriculture sent two ex¬ 
perts (Chesnut and Wilcox), to Montana to investigate the plant 
poisoning of stock in that State, and their report has been of ines¬ 
timable value not only to the live stock industry of that State but 
to the whole country, more especially to the arid West. Other 
