September, 1909 
Pretty storks in a cage can be had, such as you find over 
there in their tea house gardens, and brilliant long-tailed 
pheasants to strut about, or bright colored ducks to 
swim in the ponds. 
And you may have also an old Buddha which will sit in 
the shade and look down in meditation into the deepest 
spot in the pool; and stone lanterns which, on a summer’s 
evening may be lighted, reflecting on the still water, making 
you dream of Nara, where the huge bronze Buddha sleeps, 
91 
and the pretty spotted deer graze while the lanterns twinkle 
in the night. 
Clear green tea may be served from tiny porcelain 
cups to one’s guests, or the delicious hot sacki on lacquer 
trays, while dainty bamboo and silver pipes are passed, 
and sweetmeats on plates decorated with the deeds of 
the forty Ronins, those brave and reckless Samurai, the 
murderous feudal chiefs they love to tell about to-day, 
who fought so fiercely with their two swords. 
House and Garden 
Poisonous Vagrant Weeds 
BY A. O. HUNTINGTON 
A MONG the various weeds which bloom each year along 
our country roadsides, it is interesting to see how 
many are tramps and emigrants from Europe. Often these 
wayfarers from other lands have desirable, ornamental 
qualities to contribute to the general attraction of the 
flowers growing by the side of the road, but unfortunately 
many of them have objectionable traits of character, and suc¬ 
ceed in firmly implanting themselves on ground from which 
they have crowded out our own beautiful wild flowers. 
One of the most noxious of these vagrants is the Corn 
Cockle ( Agrostamma githago). It is a woolly annual, from 
one to three feet high, covered with dense, white hairs. 
The flowers are solitary, and conspicuous, showing about 
even with the heads of grain. In color they are rose-pink, 
tinged with violet, and have five petals, beneath which the 
elongated lobes of the calyx project like rays. The seed 
capsule encloses rough, black, irregularly rounded seeds, 
which contain the poisonous principle known as smilacin. 
These seeds get into the grain, and in spite of the fact that 
machinery is used to remove them from the wheat, it is so 
difficult to separate them that they are often found mixed 
with the flour, and the quantity which remains determines 
its grade. In some European countries, where dealers are 
unscrupulous, this amounts to 30 or 40 per cent, and causes 
acute poisoning — and even death—after it has been made 
into bread, and eaten. 
Another familiar poisonous weed which originally came 
from Europe, and which has proved troublesome in grain 
fields and pastures throughout the United States, is the 
Black Mustard ( Brassica nigra). Its little, bright, four- 
petaled, yellow flowers are seen in waste places and along 
roadsides, from June until September, appearing in clusters 
at the end of elongated stems, closely crowded with erect, 
green pods, an inch long, filled with seeds. The plant is 
from four to six feet high, stiff, freely branching, and 
covered at the base with bristly hairs. The leaves are 
smooth towards the top of the plant, somewhat lance¬ 
shaped, and slightly toothed. The seeds of both the 
Black Mustard, and the White Mustard [Sinapis alba ), — 
a species with larger flowers, of a paler shade of yellow- 
yield with pressure a poisonous oil, called oil of mustard. 
In medicine it is used outwardly in the form of plasters and 
poultices as a rubefacient; and internally as an emetic. 
The seeds are highly poisonous, producing gastric inflamma¬ 
tion and causing acute suffering. 
The Black Mustard has become a great pest in Southern 
California, covering thousands of acres, where it grows to 
a height of six feet, and forms impenetrable thickets. In 
the shops the seeds bring from three to six cents per pound, 
and yet so slow are we to recognize the pharmaceutic and 
commercial value of the common weeds which grow every¬ 
where about us, that in one year alone 5,302,876 pounds 
of Black and White Mustard seeds were imported into the 
United States. In Europe the Mustard is cultivated. 
The parable of the grain of mustard seed. “Which indeed 
is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the 
greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree,” alludes to 
a tree called by the Arabs Khardal {Salvadora persica). 
The well known 
pink flowers of the 
Bouncing Bet (Sa- 
ponaria officinalis) 
which bloom in 
dense heads by the 
ruined walls of de¬ 
serted cellar pits, 
and in occasional 
clumps along the 
roadsides, belong to 
still another poison¬ 
ous weed from Eu¬ 
rope. 
The root abounds 
in the toxic princi¬ 
ple saponin, which, 
apart from marked 
poisonous proper¬ 
ties, possess consid¬ 
erable medicinal 
value. 
The Great or 
Stinging Nettle (Ur- 
tica dioica) and the 
Small Nettle (Ur- 
tica mens) must also 
be numbered among 
the undesirable weeds which have pushed their way into our 
unwilling recognition. They are armed with sharp, hooked 
hairs, charged with a liquid known as formic acid, which 
produces a stinging, sharp, burning pain when the plant 
comes in contact with the skin. Although the poisonous irri¬ 
tation does not last long, it is intensely disagreeable particu- 
larly for the delicateskin of children. The rash may be relieved 
by bathing the affected parts with alcohol or laudanum. 
