NOVEMBER 389 



heart was perfectly sound. Investigations followed, and he. 

 discovered that his attack was brought on by eating cold rabbit- 

 pie, which produced some peculiar form of ptomaine poisoning. 

 It appears that all pies if unventilated are dangerous, but that cold 

 rabbit-pie in these circumstances is apt to be absolutely deadly. 



We have sold the barley we thrashed the other day about a 

 hundred coombs at seventeen shillings the coomb. I am rather 

 proud to hear from the buyer, a gentleman of experience who 

 handles a vast quantity of grain, that some of this barley that 

 which was grown on the Ape field (No. 27) is in his opinion the 

 best which our district has produced this year. He priced it at 

 seventeen and sixpence, but as the rest was somewhat inferior, 

 averaged the lot at seventeen shillings. With the exception of a 

 neighbour who, as I think I have mentioned, realised eighteen 

 shillings or eighteen and sixpence for a few coombs which he 

 thrashed on the harvest field, seventeen and sixpence is, I believe, 

 the highest price that has been obtained in my neighbourhood 

 this season. 



Among many other flowers heliotrope is still growing and bloom- 

 ing with vigour in the garden. For the i2th of November this is, 

 I believe, unusual. 



November 13. To-day a friend, Mr. F. J. Jackson, who has 

 just arrived in this country from East Africa, came to pay me a 

 visit. Mr. Jackson, who is a Government Commissioner in the 

 Uganda territories, played a very active part in the recent fighting 

 with the Soudanese mutineers, in the course of which he was 

 desperately wounded. The main battle, where he met with his 

 hurt, which took place at a spot called Lubwa, must indeed have 

 been one of the most fearful struggles that has happened in any 

 part of our Empire for many years, and although in the end the 

 white men came off victorious, their loss in killed and wounded was 

 heavy. They held a position upon a slight slope, but without cover 

 beyond what was afforded by a few bushes and ant-heaps. Here 

 they lay supported only by seventeen Sikhs from an Indian 



