206 THE ANGLER AND HUNTSMAN 



whom were of historic prominence. And for the first time 

 in the history of this famous monastery the dogs had to he 

 slaughtered for apparent lack of food. 



At less critical times a report of this sort would create 

 widespread indignation, but at the present time the human 

 race is thinking so much of its own dilemma that it has no 

 symapthy to spare for dog heroes living more than 8,100 feet 

 above the surface of the sea. 



Trees From Which Many Medicines Are Made: 



Any physician will tell you that the most useful and 

 most used stimulant to the heart and for the nervous system 

 is " Strychnia. " This is an alkaloid found originally in the 

 seed of the strychnos nux-vomica, the poison-nut tree, found 

 in India, Burma, and Siam, and growing also in Cochin 

 China and Australia. It is of moderate size and has a fruit 

 the size of a small orange, with a hard shell and a bitter pulp 

 enclosing one to five seeds, less than one inch in diameter 

 and one-fourth inch thick and shaped like disks. It is the 

 bitterest substance known, and when one has heart failure, 

 or nervous exhaustion, or is run down or needs a tonic, some 

 doctor is sure to give him the alkaloid from one of these 

 peculiar Indian trees. 



Textbooks on medicine frequently refer to "emergency 

 heart stimulants," meaning by this drugs used by hypoder- 

 mic injection to produce prompt stimulation of a weakened 

 heart. Some of the most valuable heart stimulants require 

 a good deal of time after being taken to produce their ef- 

 fects, hence the need of emergency heart stimulants. 

 Strychnine, we know, is a splendid emergency heart stim- 

 ulant. 



A tree which has various species throughout the world 

 and is of some medical interest, is the acacia. The acacia 

 Senegal is the type of tree which furnishes gum acacia, or 

 gum arabic. While acacia is not possessed of any marked 

 curative properties of itself, it is a constituent of many im- 



