_May 29._ It is evident that the virtues of plants are almost completely unknown to us, and we esteem the few with which we are better acquainted unreasonably above the many which are comparatively unknown to us. Bigelow says: “It is a subject of some curiosity to consider, if the knowledge of the present Materia Medica were by any means to be lost, how many of the same articles would again rise into notice and use. Doubtless a variety of new substances would develop unexpected powers, while perhaps the poppy would be shunned as a deleterious plant, and the cinchona might grow unmolested upon the mountains of Quito.” Sawyer regards _Nux vomica_ among the most valuable. B. says (1817): “We have yet to discover our anodynes and our emetics, although we abound in bitters, astringents, aromatics, and demulcents. In the present state of our knowledge we could not well dispense with opium and ipecacuanha, yet a great number of foreign drugs, such as gentian, columbo, chamomile, kino, catechu, cascarilla, canella, etc., for which we pay a large annual tax to other countries, might in all probability be superseded by the indigenous products of our own. It is certainly better that our own country people should have the benefit of collecting such articles, than that we should pay for them to the Moors of Africa, or the Indians of Brazil.” The thorn-apple (_Datura Stramonium_) (apple of Peru, devil’s-apple, Jamestown-weed) “emigrates with great facility, and often springs up in the ballast of ships, and in earth carried from one country to another.” It secretes itself in the hold of vessels and migrates. It is a sort of cosmopolitan weed, a roving weed. What adventures! What historian knows when first it came into a country! He quotes Beverly’s “History of Virginia” as saying that some soldiers in the days of Bacon’s rebellion, having eaten some of this plant, which was boiled for salad by mistake, were made natural fools and buffoons by it for eleven days, without injury to their bodies (? ?). The root of a biennial or perennial will accumulate the virtues of the plant more than any other part. B. says that Pursh states that the sweet-scented goldenrod (_Solidago odora_) “has for some time [_i. e._ before 1817][185] been an article of exportation to China, where it fetches a high price.” And yet it is known to very few New-Englanders. “No botanist,” says B., “even if in danger of starving in a wilderness, would indulge his hunger on a root or fruit taken from an unknown plant of the natural order _Luridæ_, of the _Multisiliquæ_, or the _umbelliferous aquatics_. On the contrary he would not feel a moment’s hesitation in regard to any of the _Gramina_, the fruit of the _Pomaceæ_ and several other natural families of plants, which are known to be uniformly innocent in their effects.” The aromatic flavor of the checkerberry is also perceived in the _Gaultheria hispidula_, in _Spiræa ulmaria_ and the root of _Spiræa lobata_, and in the birches.