The poisonous nature of the allied species of _Rhus_ used for the manufacture of “lacquer” or varnish is recognised by the Japanese and others who prepare this product and have to handle the plant—they wear gloves to protect the hands. As showing what kind of trouble the “poison-ivy” and “poison-oak” (another kind of _Rhus_ or _Sumach_) give in the United States, I will quote a letter I have received from an American lady well known in London society. She says: “I have known, suffered, and struggled against the poison-ivy in America from my earliest years, when my poor mother lay for days with blinded and swollen eyes, having gathered it inadvertently. The ‘poison-ivy,’ as we call it, is a curse to country life, outside the purely artificial and cultivated gardens, and even there it creeps in insidiously.” She describes a beautiful farm property on Lake Champlain, on the Canadian border, where she and her family would spend many weeks in summer in order to enjoy the delights of complete seclusion in wild, unspoilt country: “The one and only drawback to the place was,” she writes, “the inexhaustible quantity of poison-ivy. Our first duty had been to teach my two daughters and their governess how to distinguish and avoid contact with it. The one and only rule was that the poison-ivy has the clusters of three leaflets (the middle leaflet with a longer stalk, _E.R.L._), whereas the woodbine (not the English woodbine, which is a convolvulus, _E.R.L._), or, as you call it, ‘Virginian creeper,’ has five leaflets in a cluster. Every path which we used frequently and necessarily, such as the path to the boat-house, and to the cove where the bathing-house stood, we kept cleared of the _Rhus_ for a sufficient width, but in the woods eternal vigilance was the price of safety. To uproot and burn is the only way to destroy it, but, of course, that involves danger to the one who does the work, because contact with the spade used, and with the garments which touched the ivy, might communicate the poison. The farmer and the countryfolk about declared that the fumes from the burning plant could and did poison those who breathed them. We used to turn a flock of sheep into the most used parts. They prefer the poison-ivy to grass, and greedily eat down every leaf within reach in hedge or path. But that, of course, was a mere temporary safety, as the plant is most tenacious of life. I personally had a most grievous experience one summer. I can only suppose that my dress, though very short for wood and hill walking, brushed over the poisonous plant, and then, when I undressed, came into contact with my skin. Both legs became covered with the eruption, eventually developing pustules, and the agony of itching, burning, and smarting was indescribable. The first remedy applied is usually a frequent use of baths of some alkali, generally common soda. With me it was altogether inadequate, and the doctor carefully covered the affected