n8 PLANT AND ORGANIC CHEMISTRY 
or ten feet, gradually diverge from one another, giving to the 
whole shrub the outline of a spread fan. Each separate stem 
is clothed throughout with short gray thorns and small dark 
green leaves, and terminates in a spike, a foot long, of bright 
scarlet trumpet-shaped flowers. The stems are not so thickly 
armed with thorns but that they can be handled if grasped 
circumspectly, and being very hard and durable, as well as 
of a convenient size, they are much employed for fencing pur¬ 
poses about the stage stations and upon the ranches adjoining 
the desert.” The author states: “Give a skillful Mexican 
ocotilla poles and plenty of rawhide thongs and he requires 
neither nail nor hammer to construct a line of fence, which 
for combined strength, neatness, and durability fairly rivals 
the best work of that kind done in our land of saw mills and 
nail factories.” 
The plant is botanically described under order Tamariscinea , 
tribe III, Fouquierece , new genus and species. 1 For other 
sources of information see “A Tour in New Mexico; ” 2 and in 
“ Plantae Wrightianae 3 Texano-Mexicanae.” The writer has not 
been able to find any notice of chemical studies made upon it. 
The specimens of ocotilla, at the writer’s request, were col¬ 
lected and transmitted from Lake valley, Southwest New 
Mexico, through the kindness of Professor E. D. Cope. The 
portions of the stem, similar to those used in the analysis, vary 
in diameter from an inch to an inch and a half. The bark 
shows a thickness of over an eighth of an inch, and is of a sage 
color generally. The exterior surface is made rough by an 
interlacement of hard projecting material; some of the smaller 
stems are encircled with the gray thorns described, arising 
in regular series from the projecting portions of the bark. 
Between the interlacements are oblong and diamond-shaped 
intervals, which are filled with superimposed layers of a yel¬ 
lowish color and looking as if coated with a wax. They ap¬ 
pear to be cemented together by a glistening substance which, 
1 Bentham and Hooker, Genera Plantarum. 
2 By Dr. N. Wislizenus. 
3 Gray, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge , vol. iii, part i, p. 85, and 
part ii, p. 63. 
