84 EDINBURGH NEWS NOTES. [June 



made from the wood. Altogether, apart from claims of the sellers of 

 the 60,000 acres of forest giants now under the tutelage of Mr. 

 Auldjo Jamieson of Arizona Copper Mine celebrity, successful com- 

 mercial transactions in the wood here appear to imply such 

 reductions in the charges of lumbering as will allow of a lower price 

 being quoted. This after all, by cheaper means of transport and the 

 like, may be practicable. 



Tree-climbing plants, like the human parasites who hover round 

 successful men, usually excite suspicion and dislike. But there may 

 be uses other than their apparent ones for even such. Professor 

 T. E. Fraser, at the May meeting of the Botanical Society, described 

 the admirable properties in heart disease of Strophanthus 

 liispidus, the source of the arrow poison of the natives of Eastern 

 Africa. Professor Praser's experiments with this new drug, very 

 many times more powerful than Digitalis, or the common foxglove, 

 appear to inaugurate a new era of hope to many new sufferers from 

 a class of diseases apparently increasing with the march of modern 

 progress. He gave great credit to Mr. John Buchanan, of Zomba, 

 Eastern Africa, for his exertions in furnishing the necessary material. 



Colonel Mukdoch Smith is, I understand, on his way home from 

 Teheran, to take the place vacant since the death of Professor Archer 

 at the head of the Chambers Street Museum. No doubt the new 

 Director's transmission of rare archaeological finds from the East 

 to South Kensington has influenced the authorities in this ap- 

 pointment. It adds another to the able group of specialists to the 

 Edinburgh Museum, which as yet is lame in its department of 

 archa3ology. Colonel Smith, who hails from Kilmarnock, is a son of 

 the Church ; and a notable example how the Competitive Examina- 

 tion system has in his case at least brought the ablest to the front. 



Dixi. 



