THE CALABAR BEAN. 75 



The Calabar Bean. 



The Calabar bean, or Physostigma veneyiosum, is an in- 

 teresting member of the family of leguminous plants. It 

 gets its common name from that region in Africa near the 

 Gulf of Guinea, known as Calabar where it grows. The 

 bean contains a violent poison which is used in medicine 

 for causing contraction of the pupils of the eyes and in tet- 

 anus, neuralgia and rheumatic affections. It is also 

 known as ordeal bean from its use by the negroes of its 

 habitat in witchcraft and similar troubles. The accused 

 is made to swallow a bean. If it kills him he is guilty. 

 If his stomach rejects it and it is thrown up he is adjudg- 

 ed innocent. There can this be said in favor of such a 

 trial, that the accused would have more of a chance than 

 did our ancestors who were tried by means of red hot 

 plowshares. 



Fools the Birds. 



Owing to the ravages of the yellow hammers, or flickers, work- 

 men have been kept busy in repairing and replacing the posts of 

 the telephone line here ever since the birds arrived in the spring. 



While the posts of the telephone and telegraph wires were con- 

 fined to the cleared land away from the woods there was no trouble 

 in keeping them in good condition for fifteen or twenty years, but 

 when private and public enterprize extended the telephone to re- 

 mote sporting camps and fishing grounds the flickers began to peck 

 holes in the soft arbor vitae wood, digging galleries far into the 

 heart and making the sticks so weak that they broke off in high 

 winds. 



Until the white cedar, or arbor vitae, began to be emploj-ed for 

 holding the wires aloft, the flickers did not disturb this species of 

 trees. Most of the work performed by these birds is done upon 

 trunks of white birch, which is soft and very easy to penetrate, 

 and upon such other aged trees as had partly rotted, the decajring 

 wood furnishing homes for insects on which the flickers subsist. 



