SLEEPY GRASS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XII, Issue 1774, 28 September 1895, Page 2

SLEEPY GRASS.

In some parts of New Mexico there grows a grass which produces a somniferous effect on the animals that graze upon if. Horses, after eating this grass, in nearly all cases stand sleeping, while cows and sheep almost invariably lie down. It has occasionally happened that have stopped to allow horses to feed in places where the grass grew pretty thickly, and the animals have had time to eat a considerable quantity before i‘s effects manifested themselves. In such cases horses have gone to sleep on the road, and it is hard to arouse them.

The effect of the grass passes off in an hour or two, and no bad results have ever been noticed on account of it. Cattle on the ranches (according to “Person’s Weekly,”) frequently come upon'patches of the grass, where they feed for perhaps half an hour, and then fall asleep for an hour or more, when they wake up and start feeding again. » The programme is repeated perhaps a dozen times, until the thirst obliges them to go to water. Whether, like . the poppy, the grass contains opium, or whether its sleep producing “property is due to some other substance, has not been determined Mr Frederick V. ColViH, Botanist United States Departure of Agriculture, says : “The so-called sleepy grass is known technically as Stipa viridula robusta, and is known from reliable persons to have a narcotic effect on. horses and other stock.” .