THE TECHNOLOGIST. [June 1, 1865. 



524 SCIENTIFIC NOTES. 



occasionally observed that even the coffee-tree, more or less under cul- 

 ture in their farms or gardens, is neglected, and on the whole they are 

 indifferent to the stimulant properties of its fruit, so long as the Kola- 

 nuts are attainable ; nay, they indulge in the luxury of chewing them, 

 even when gathering the ripe purple-coloured berries of the former for 

 sale or domestic use. Nevertheless, the semi-civilized negro enjoys his 

 cup of tea and coffee with the same gout as a European. 



Wherever the slave trade prevailed, the Cola acuminata appears, 

 sooner or later, to have been introduced as a necessary sequence to the 

 importation of slaves to their new homes ; and, in countries where they 

 became located in large numbers, it was studiously imported, and culti- 

 vated for their advantage and benefit. Hence the introduction of the 

 tree into the Mauritius, several of the West Indian Islands, Brazil, 

 •Mexico, and other extensive regions on the continent of America. 



In Jamaica the young plants were brought over and naturalized from 

 the Gold Coast, between the early epochs of 1630-40, by a Guinea 

 trader, under the local appellation of Biche, or Bissai, a name still 

 retained throughout the island. Its importation has been ascribed to 

 the urgent request of an agent of large sugar estates, exclusively worked 

 by the Coromantyn, or Gold Coast negroes. Similar to the grains of 

 Paradise (Amomum Malegueta, Rose), it was specially intended to act 

 either as a medicinal prophylactic agent, or as an ordinary article of 

 food, to avert, as far as practicable, those attacks of constitutional 

 despondency to which this class of negroes were peculiarly liable. By 

 thus allowing them the means of participating in those favourite condi- 

 ments in general use in Africa, that predisposition to epidemic out- 

 breaks of suicidal mania (an inevitable propensity for which ran like 

 infection through several contiguous estates) became gradually 

 diminished, and ultimately checked, after narrowly entailing an almost 

 total depopulation in not a few of them. 



Irirntifir jfnfe 



South Kensington Museom. — The annual report on the adminis- 

 tration of this central repository for examples of science and art 

 states that the general condition of the pictures and drawings is 

 most satisfactory. Mr. Redgrave, the Inspector-General for Art, 

 is able to report that the national collection of Avater-colour paint- 

 ings gradually increases in importance. Several purchases have been 

 made in the past year, and the collection has been enriched by gifts of 

 water-colour paintings from the Rev. T. Raven, Mr. R. Sasse, jun., and 



