Almost equally as important as tobacco in the life of these California Indians is a vision-producing plant closely related to the common garden trumpetflower and to the deadly nightshade. The leaves from the east side of the plant are smoked; this brings about a state of exaltation in which various animals are seen to come and offer their help to the dreamer. Leaves from the west side are never smoked. It would mean certain death; the Indians associate the west with death. Much the same effect is obtained by drinking a blue-frothy decoction of the root. It not only produces visions but acts as a powerful anesthetic. It is highly poisonous, however, and only those Indians who know the proper dosage make use of it. The plant is known as “grandmother,” because of its comfort-bringing qualities. _The Abominable Snow Man_ Mysterious beast of the high Himalayas is the “abominable snow man,” so-called by natives. It is evidently a four-footed, five-toed mammal that weighs from 150 to 200 pounds and lives in family groups. This much, at least, can be deduced from its tracks in the snow, according to Dr. Edouard Wyss-Dunant, leader of the Swiss Mt. Everest expedition of 1952. He found the footprints in a snow covered frozen lake at an altitude of about 15,000 feet. Although the tracks are bear-like, the animal apparently has a quite unbearish ability to leap from crag to crag in migrations from one high valley to another. The snow prints were first reported by Himalayan explorers to be ape-like, or even almost human, and this led to speculations that some still unknown type of big ape might have evolved in the high mountains. The tracks, says Dr. Wyss-Dunant in his recent report to the Royal Geographic Society, are undoubtedly those of a large “plantigrade animal”—that is, one that walks on the sole of the foot with the heel touching the ground. This is the way of both bear and man. The sole of the foot is from four to five inches long by the depth of the tracks, compared to those made by men of known weights. Some smaller footprints were found, believed to be those of young animals. Three of the tracks showed imprints of claws. Small triangular markings on the heels of two of them were attributed to tufts of hair that grows on the bottom of the feet.