135 



fruits the larvae had reached maturity before these had ripened, 

 and had been killed by the sticky juice of the green fruit in en- 

 deavoring- to escape. The means of control that now seem valu- 

 able are the production of varieties of papaw that have thick 

 meat and that ripen slowly, and the conscientious destruction of 

 adventitious or wild papaw plants, and of all infested fruits. All 

 plants with inferior fruit should be eliminated. H. A. R. 



THE PRODUCTION OF THYMOL. 



In the issue for January 13, 1915, the Times calls attention to 

 the fact that hitherto the well-known antiseptic thymol has been 

 manufactured in Germany, notwithstanding the fact that ajowan 

 seeds, the sole source of commercial thymol, are grown in India. 



The plant which produces ajowan seeds belongs to the natural 

 order umbelliferae, and is known as Canim copticmn. The plant 

 is cultivated from Bengal and the Punjab to the South Deccan. 

 It appears that two products are obtained from the seed, but the 

 'Ornum water,' v\hich contains the thymol, is the more important. 



Thymol is a better antiseptic than phenol (carbolic acid), being 

 less irritant in its action on wounds. Thymol is also a useful 

 medicine for the expulsion of intestinal parasites, being largely 

 employed in cases of ankylostomiasis. 



Perhaps ajowan seed might be profitably cultivated as a minor 

 industry in the West Indies ; though, of course, the point in ques- 

 tion at present is not one of production, but one of manufacture. 

 — Ai^ricidtiiral Ncn's. 



EFFECT OF THE TROPICS ON THE BLOOD. 



The question of the influence of a tropical climate upon the 

 blood of children of European descent is dealt with in the Annals 

 of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology (December 15, 1914), in 

 a paper by A. Breinl and H. Priestley, of the Australian Institute 

 of Tropical Medicine. The investigation on which the paper is 

 based was carried out in Queensland, and some very interesting- 

 results, possibly applicable in the West Indies, were obtained. It 

 is worthy of note that previous investigations on the same subject 

 have led to more or less contradictory results, but the present 

 conclusions, being based on a large number of observations, may 

 be considered as fairly well established. 



The conclusions are as follows : Careful blood examinations 

 performed on 574 school children in Townsville, Queensland, of 

 European descent, of ages between seven and fifteen years, of 

 whcm the majority had been born and had resided in Tropical 

 Queensland during their whole life, indicated ( 1 ) that the aver- 

 age number of red blood corpuscles is not diminished when com- 

 pared with analogous figures for children born and bred in a 



