300 BOTANICAL NOTES. NOTICES, AND QUERIES. [December, 



Free Church School-house of Braemar, within half a mile of the 

 village, and to the south of the high-road leading to the Linn of 

 Dee.'' 



"It grew sparingly on some weather-worn gneissic boulders. 

 The principal rocks in the neighbourhood are gneiss, granite, 

 and mica-slate. I did not meet with it in all the neighbouring 

 mountains, which include some of the highest in Scotland (Ben 

 Mac-Dhui 4296 feet. Brae-reach 4280, Cairntoul 4230, Cairn- 

 gorum 4050. It is however a small Lichen, and, not expecting 

 such a rarity, I did not specially look for it. I have not hitherto 

 found it in other parts of Scotland, notwithstanding that I have 

 visited most of its highest mountains, in the pursuit of Lichen- 

 ological studies (the Cairngorum range, Ben Ne^as, Ben Lawers, 

 the Coolen range, Skye, etc.). It shoidd in future be carefully 

 looked for in such localities as Braemar." There is a beautiful 

 illustration of the Lichen accompanying the Paper, for which we 

 offer Dr. Lindsay our hearty acknowledgments. 



BOTANICAL NOTES, NOTICES, AND QUERIES. 

 The Indian Materia Medica. 



The Govemment of India pays upwards of £40,000 a year for quinine. 

 Notwithstanding this vast expenditure, the supply might be tripled with 

 advantage. Indents for quinine are jealously watched. At civil stations 

 it is almost refused, and during an outbreak of fever it is always the first 

 article to fall short, and the last to be sufficiently replaced. Of the cost of 

 the remaining drugs we are not informed, but it can scarcely fall short of 

 something like 30 lacs of rupees a year. These two figui"es are sufficient to 

 prove the importance, in an economical view, of the substitution of native 

 drugs. On the important benefits their introduction, or rather discovery, 

 would confer upon the people, it is needless to enlarge. To the mass of 

 the population English medicines are totally inaccessible. Almost alone 

 among imported goods, di'ugs maintain the price they bore in the good 

 old days before the Pagoda-tree had been shaken into ban-enness. Men 

 in sickness do not ask the price of medicine. The vendors have eveiy in- 

 terest in maintaining it. Doctors have little interest in its reduction, and 

 so the good old profitable rates are allowed quietly to endm-e. The natives 

 do the best they can, sometimes reviving under cb-ugs that would kill any 

 other race of human beings, but usually dying of attacks which the En- 

 glishman regards as temporary ills. The evil and its remedy are both im- 

 derstood, and have been pointed out about once a week during the half 

 of the past century. Yet we have done nothing towards obtaining the re- 

 medy we all know to exist. There is probably not a medicine imported 



