OCR Text |
Show Odd Uses for Plants, Trees in Distant Lands A cousin of the familiar pea-flower, pea-flower, called Tephrosia, is used in the West Indies and Polynesia for a very unsportsmanlike form of angling. an-gling. The crushed leaves and stems are thrown into the river, where the fish are quickly stupefied stupe-fied and easily caught. Another West Indian, the hog gum tree, is so called because wounded hogs rub the injured parts against the tree to smear themselves with the abundant resin it exudes, which heals their wounds. This resin is so powerful that the natives make torches of the branches. Another light-giving plant is the candleberry tree, a native of Polynesia related to our common spurge, notes a writer writ-er in London Tit-Bits magazine. The kernels of the walnut-like fruit are so rich in oil that they are stuck on reeds and used as candles. Certain of the Fiji islanders never use forks except when they eat their neighbors. They make these forks of Casuarina, a tree that looks like a huge specimen of our common horse-tail. Each fork bears a name, and is handed down as an heirloom from generation to generation. The cow-tree, a native of South America corresponding to the familiar fa-miliar bread-fruit, yields a milk practically indistinguishable from ordinary cow's milk in chemical composition and nourishing qualities, quali-ties, from which excellent cream and cheese are made. Linnaeus, the famous Eighteenth-century Eighteenth-century Swedish botanist, made a sort of floral clock. The dial consisted con-sisted of names of flowers, arranged in the order of their opening and closing hour by hour. The dandelion, dande-lion, for example, opens about S a. m. and closes about 9 p. m. Greater accuracy is obtained from a Japanese form of magnolia. The watchmen use the powdered bark for burning in graduated tubes, to mark the time by the regular combustion com-bustion of the powder. Perhaps the limit of queer uses of plants is reached in the case o plumbago, related to thrift and sea-pink. sea-pink. The fresh-root is a powerful blistering agent, and the beggars of San Domingo use it to raise ulcers ul-cers on their bodies in the hope of exciting the sympathy of tha passers-by. |