During the western immigration of 1849 the Indians along the Missouri River described to the immigrants a plant (_Astragalus mollissimus_) producing death in horses and cattle, which was preceded by various forms of excitement.[83] The attention of the United States Department of Agriculture was first called to the toxic action of the loco plants in 1873, when specimens of the plants, which were identified as _Astragalus hornii_ and _A. lentiginosus_,[84] were sent from California by Mr. O. B. Ormsby, with the statement that they were poisonous to stock, especially to horses. Mrs. J. S. Whipple also corroborated this information. The botanist of the Department, Dr. George Vasey,[85] published a note and requested further information concerning the plants. These notes were enlarged by a similar contribution by Dr. P. Moffat on _Aragallus lamberti_.[86] The following year Vasey reported with more fullness, and his description of the action of the plants is substantially what we find in most of the books of to-day. In 1876 Lemmon[87] noted that _Astragalus mortoni_ was "a deadly sheep poison." At the same time Rothrock,[88] botanist of the United States Geographical Survey under Lieutenant Wheeler, described these plants, and Kellogg,[89] a botanist in California, reported that _Astragalus menziesii_ was causing great losses in horses, sheep, and cattle and claimed that the stockmen had been familiar with this disorder for at least ten or fifteen years. This report of Kellogg was followed by that of Rothrock[90] in 1877. In 1876 a specimen of _Aragallus lamberti_ was sent from Colorado to Professor Prescott, of the University of Michigan, under the name of "crazy weed," with the statement that it was poisonous to horses and cattle and that, while the Mexicans often used it in making beer, it sometimes caused symptoms in men. His pupil, Miss Watson, undertook a study of its chemical properties. She failed to isolate any pure chemical compound, but claimed that in the root there was a body giving alkaloidal reactions and that there was also a resinous body present. Another of his pupils, W. R. Birdsall, took the ground-up root himself in doses of 20 grains at various intervals for several days and later 40-grain doses in one and a half hours, but without experiencing any marked symptoms except colicky pains. A kitten also was given about one and a half ounces of the fluid extract without effect. Prescott[91] sums up by saying that "it would seem that the dried ground root possesses no poisonous properties." The work of Miss Watson was considered of sufficient importance to be abstracted in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1878 (1879), page 134. Gradually the Department of Agriculture became more and more interested in this subject, and Peter Collier, chief chemist, in 1878, examined the roots and leaves of _Aragallus lamberti_ for alkaloids, but found none.[92]