It is the purpose of this publication to assist those interested in medicinal plant identification and to furnish other useful information in connection with the work.

Elbridge Amos Stuart knew almost nothing about the evaporated-milk business when Thomas E. Yerxa persuaded him to join in the purchase of a bankrupt condensery in Kent, Washington in 1899. Having grown up on a farm in Indiana, however, Stuart was acquainted with dairying, and as the former proprietor of a general store in El Paso, Texas and later a wholesale grocery in Los Angeles, he recognized the value of sanitary milk at a time when fresh milk was neither universally available nor always potable.