1869.] Botcmy and Vegetcible Fhysiology. 267 



milky juice which has oozed from them, and which the gatherer 

 scrapes off with his knife and wipes on a leaf. When he has accu- 

 mulated a sufficient quantity on a leaf to make a ball, it is rolled 

 up and left to dry in the sun. The period between the making of 

 the incisions and gathering the juice is a very critical one, for 

 should a shower of rain come on, as it often does at this season, the 

 juice is entirely lost. The opium-growers are generally small 

 landowners, who superintend the cultivation themselves with their 

 families. The cakes are bought by travelling merchants, who 

 convey them in sealed bags to Smyrna, and some few to Constan- 

 tinople, where the bags are opened after being sold to the city 

 merchants. Then they are carefully examined for adulteration and 

 as to quality, three qualities being distinguished. It requires the 

 greatest skill and long experience to become a good judge of opium 

 cakes — odour, weight, texture, &c., being all important. 



Aliazga. — Akazga is a poison known from the reports of 

 travellers, used as an ordeal on the west coast of Africa, and found 

 by two French chemists to exert physiological effects similar to 

 those of nux-vomica. A supposed sorcerer is made to drink an 

 infusion of Akazga bark and then to walk over small Akazga sticks. 

 If guilty, he stumbles and tries to pass the sticks as though they 

 were great logs, eventually faUing in convulsions and being clubbed 

 by the surrounding savages. If innocent, the kidneys are said to 

 act freely, and the poison is supposed to be thus eliminated. Dr. 

 Fraser, of Edinburgh, has received specimens of Akazga in bundles 

 of long, slender, and crooked stems, and examined its botanical 

 relations and chemical properties. Consulting with Professor Oliver, 

 of Kew, Professor Balfour, of Edinburgh, and Professor Dickson, of 

 Glasgow, he comes to the conclusion that the Akazga plant is new 

 to the flora of West Africa, and he supposes it may be a new 

 species of Strychnos. He has succeeded in separating from it a 

 crystalline alkaloid, closely resembling Strychnia, but differing from 

 it in being precipitated by alkaline bicarbonates. Dr. Fraser made 

 a careful comparison of the microscopic structure of the stems of 

 Akazga and Strychnos nux-vomica, and was thus able to separate 

 them still more closely. Amongst the parcels of Akazga which he 

 examined, were certain twigs which had a different stem-structure, 

 and failed to yield the chemical products of the other specimens. Is 

 it not possible that those who escape in the ordeal may have been 

 fortimate enough to get an infusion prepared from this " false 

 Akazga " by mistake ? Dr. Fraser terms the new alkaloid Akazgia. 



The Uses of Pine Leaves. — In a paper lately read before the 

 Society of Arts, Mr. P. L. Simmonds states that a new and curious 

 application of a waste product is the utilization of the acicular 

 leaflets of pine trees. Near Breslau, in Silesia, are two establish- 

 ments, one a factory where the pine leaves are converted into what 



