To the Editor: —I have been very much interested in an editorial comment in a recent number ofThe Journal(April 19, 1919), in which it is claimed that hereafter the goldenrod must be cast out of the company of the flowering plants which are generally supposed to cause the onset of the disease falsely known as hay-fever. Whenever I have chanced, in writing or debate, to discuss the alleged specific influence of pollen as the solitary source of that affection or to combat the well-nigh universal popular belief that this particular wild flower is, among others, responsible for its manifestations, in endeavoring to plead its innocence of the charge, I have always turned involuntarily to the descriptive verse of Lowell, in which he paints, with exquisite delicacy, the national flower: Dear common flower that growest beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold. The object of this