Emery County Progress | 1907-06-15 | Page 3 | Tropical Plant That Coughs

TROPICAL PLANT THAT COUGHS way of freeing itself from coating of desert sand I 1 heard a cough and looked behind me nervously said a huntsman for J was stalking gazelles in that lion colored waste the sahara desert and having gotten rather too far south I 1 expected at any moment to become a pincushion tor the poisoned darts ot the dread but there was no one there the flat desert quivered in the sunshine and here and there a dusty plant stood wearily but though I 1 commanded the landscape or a radius ot 50 miles not a living creature was in sight another cough I 1 swung around quickly the same plant yellow with dust drooped in the dry heat that was all hack hack on my left this time I 1 swung around again A like plant met my eye the thing was growing rather uy As I 1 regarded ibl last plant a loeh from it believe me tue plant coughed it shook all over and then tightening lip as a man does when he Is about to sneeze it gave a violent cough and a little cloud ot dust arose I 1 found out afterward that the plant was the coughing bean which la common in many tropical countries in the long dry heats this weird growths great boies become choked with dust and it would die of hon were it not that a powerful gas accumulates inside it which when it gains sufficient pressure explodes with a sound precisely like the hu man cough the explosion shakes the plant pores free of their dust and the coughing bean is in good health again