304 
ON OIL OF WORMSEED, ETC. 
error. A few druggists, vermifuge venders, and physicians, 
however, persisted in selling, using, and prescribing the 
Baltimore article, and it has gradually come into more 
general use ; and vermifuge makers, knowing its value, use 
it exclusively. 
The soil in this vicinity appears to be particularly adap- 
ted to the developement of the activity and value of the 
wormseed plant. About twenty or thirty miles north of 
Baltimore, some fifty or sixty persons grow the plant in 
small or large patches on their land. Newly cleared ground 
is said to be most productive. The seed are sown early in 
the Spring in small beds of good soil, like cabbage seed, and 
the process of cultivation is similar to that for cabbage. If 
the season proves favorable, the plants will be ready to set 
out during the month of June. They are planted in ridges 
three feet apart, the plants in the rows to be from six to ten 
inches apart. The succeeding year the roots, which are 
perennial, will yield another crop more productive in oil 
than that of the first year,and do not need replanting for four 
or five years. The plants attain the height of from two to 
four feet, and are ripe for distillation generally between the 
first and fifteenth of September, which is known by the 
tops turning yellow ; the stalks are cut from 6* to 10 inches 
above the ground, in fact all the herbaceous portion. Some 
seasons the plant yields more oil than others, [a fact equally 
applicable to all annual volatile oil yielding plants.] An 
acre produces sufficient to yield twenty pounds of the 
oil, and as from 50 to 70 pounds of the plant are required to 
yield one pound of oil, that is from l£ to 2 per cent., it fol- 
lows the yield is from a half to three quarters of a ton of the 
fresh plant per acre. It is distilled after it has been gathered 
two or three days. The average annual product is about 
twenty-five hundred pounds of oil. The growers distil the 
oil themselves. The apparatus now employed by them is 
the same as that used forty years ago, and consists of an 
