554        Conservation  and  Cultivation  of  Plants.      { ADecSe^903m* 
tells  me  that  the  plant  is  exceedingly  rare  in  Maryland.  I  finally 
obtained  some  beautiful  flowering  specimens  from  Mr.  Joseph  Jacobs, 
of  Atlanta,  Ga.,  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  Spigelia  Maiylandica 
does  not  grow  in  abundance  north  of  the  Gulf  States  and  is  prob- 
ably not  very  abundant  even  there. 
Dr.  True,  of  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture,  in  a  paper  at 
the  last  meeting  of  the  American  Pharmaceutical  Association,  called 
attention  to  the  fact  that  the  root  of  an  entirely  different  plant  was 
furnished  him  for  "  pink  root "  or  spigelia.  This  substitute,  accord, 
ing  to  Dr.  True,  is  the  rhizome  of  Ruellia  ciliosa,  and  is  apparently 
the  same  rhizome  which  was  furnished  me  and  which  Greenish  has 
described  and  illustrated  in  Phatm.  Jour.,  1891  (March  14),  p.  839. 
Other  medicinal  plants  are  likewise  becoming  scarce,  as  tkose 
yielding  serpentaria,  senega,  cypripedium,  etc.  Attention  has  been 
directed  to  the  growing  scarcity  of  some  of  these  drugs  by  various 
writers  in  the  past  twenty-five  years.  (See  this  Journal,  1900,  p. 
184.)  One  locality  after  another  is  exhausted  in  the  collection  of 
vegetable  drugs,  and  while  fortunately  new  fields  have  been  discov- 
ered in  some  instances,  still  the  vast  areas  on  which  we  depended 
for  certain  products  are  becoming  more  and  more  reduced. 
The  conservation  of  useful  plants  is  imperative,  and  when  we  see,  as 
in  the  case  of  coca  and  cinchona,  that  man  by  selection  and  cultiva- 
tion has  not  only  conserved  but  improved  certain  plants,  it  is  impor- 
tant that  we  study  our  medicinal  plants  in  their  natural  surroundings 
until  we  have  gained  such  a  knowledge  of  the  peculiar  require- 
ments of  each  that  they  may  be  cultivated  successfully  and  thus  con- 
served before  they  are  exterminated.  It  is  true  that  from  single 
specimens  of  many  of  our  economical  plants  a  nation's  wealth  might 
be  replenished  in  case  of  necessity.  But  this  could  only  be  realized 
providing  we  understood  the  peculiar  conditions  under  which  they 
develop.  It  has  been  stated  that  the  eucalypts  are  less  easily  propa- 
gated than  most  other  forest  trees,  and  yet  in  certain  portions  of  the 
United  States  they  are  more  extensively  cultivated  than  any  other 
exotic  tree,  simply  because  the  peculiar  climatic  conditions  under 
which  the  several  species  develop  are  fairly  well  understood.  It  is 
due  to  Baron  von  Mueller  and  M.  Ramel,  who,  fifty  years  ago,  started 
to  introduce  this  interesting  genus  in  various  civilized  portions  of 
the  globe,  that  it  is  to-day  one  of  the  most  extensively  cultivated 
and  most  valuable  genus  of  forest  trees. 
