i'EB. 2, 1908.] 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTUmsT. 
and pennyroyal, as an excellent substitute ; while 
another enemy of the cup that cheers ventured to 
prophesy about the middle of the ei^'hteenth 
century, that the peiiiicious foreiijn leaves would 
quickly become cheaper, wherein he was right, and 
that tea would then out of fashici oiid te re- 
placed by sage, wherein he was hopelessly wrong. 
At the time when tliis wise person wrote, an 
ordinary breakfast among the poorer folk 
was bread and butter with sagetea; but 
the cheapening of the real tea simply 
drove such substitutes as saj^e out of use. in 
revolutionary days in America various herb;<l 
substitutes for tea were used from patriotic motives. 
After the Boston mob had thrown the cargoes 
of the three East India tea ships into the 
harbour, and the colonists bad taken a vow to 
buy no tea which had to pay the obnoxious duty, 
their wives and daugiiters — ' daughleis of liberty ' 
they called themselves — devoted their ingenuity 
to devising fragrant beverages to take the place 
of the boycotted leaf from the Far East, and 
some strange decoctions were made and perhaps 
enjoyed. The stalwart New Enplanders drank 
'tea' made from the leaves of rib-wort, straw- 
berry plants, and currant busiies, sage, thorough- 
wort, and other herbs. So called ' Liberty Tea' 
was made from the four-leaved loosestrife, while 
' Hyperion Tea,' says Mrs. Earle— an invaluable 
chronicler of Colonial life and habits— was fiom 
'raspberry leaves,' and was said by good patriots 
to be 'very delicate and most excellent.' The 
beverage may have been so when tasted by 
patriotic palates, but we can feel pretty certain 
that many a colonial dame must have thougliD 
with longing of the cups of fragrant Hyson which 
she had been accustomed to enjoy before the 
embargo was laid on the imported leaf. One at 
least of the substitutes named above, thorough wort, 
is still used in rural New England for medical 
purposes, if Miss Wilkins' stories may be accepted 
as authorities. No reader of those delightful 
sketches will forget how often thoroughwort tea, 
as a remedy, especially for an ailing or more 
often supposedly ailing child, is suggested and 
made by village wisdom. Kural medicine of the 
same kind is, of course, common enough also on 
this side the Atlantic. Herbal remedies mipht 
not be used quite so much, perhaps, nowadays as 
in times gone by, but ' teas ' from herbs of various 
kinds are still brewed and hrmly believed in 
by many country folk. Valerian, for instance, 
which is commonly known by the significant 
popular name of ' all-heal,' is one of these herbs, 
for the ' tea' made from its loot is believed to be 
of eflicacy in cases of consumption. An infusion 
of milk wort — the plant whose pretty flowers, 
varying in colour from pink to a deep blue or 
purple, are so abundant on dry, upland paatures 
— is good for a cough. In JSussex villages ' gazel- 
tea' is a favourite prescription for a cold. Berries 
of any kind are called 'gazels,' but those 
usually employed for medicinal purposes are 
black currants. But much stranger things than 
black currants have been similarly usetl. For 
example, when Queeu Anne was known to be 
sufl'eriug from gout, a certain Martin Bowes 
wrote to the Prime Minister, ihe Earl of Oxford, 
suggesting as an easy cure a ' decoction, or tea, 
made of nettle-seed." Not a few of the herbal 
teas whieli were drunk as beverages were, like 
the New England thoroughwort, also considered 
to have no small medicinal value." — // d; C Mail, 
Jan. 2, 
THE CURE FOR MOSQUITOES. 
A POT OF BASIL. 
There is a widely spread belief, both amonpst 
natives and amongst the white .sojourner.s in 
Western Africa, that the presence of a certain 
species of plant in a room drives away mosquitoes, 
and, in fact, a single plant is said to be sufficient 
to clear a room. On his recent return from 
Northern Nigeria, Major J A Burdon, of the 
Cameron Highlanders, brought with him and gave 
to me a few leaves of this plant. These, through 
the kindness of Mr. H H W Pearson, have been 
identified by the experts at Kew as belonging to 
Ocimnm viridc, VVilld., a member of the order 
LabiatcB, which occurs from Senegambia south- 
wards to Angola. 
Major Burdon, who is Resident of the Nupe 
Province, Northern iSigeria, and Hausa Sciiolar 
of Christ's College, Cambridge, has given me the 
following account of the plant : — 
" A fragment of what turns out to be Ocimum 
viride was given me in August last at Lokoja, 
Northern Nigeria, by Captain H U Larymore, 
C.M.G., R.A., Resident of the Kabba Province. 
Capt. Larymore's notice had been drawn to the 
plant by a native living in a low-lying part of the 
native town at Lokoja, who had told him that the 
natives suffered very little from the swarms of 
mosquitoes which existed in that part, as they pro- 
tected themselves from them by the use of this 
plant, 
" Capt. Larymore made inquiries and obtained 
a few specimens of the plant, which grows wild, 
though not very abundantly, in the neighbourhood 
of Lokoja. These specimens he planted in pots 
and boxes and kept in and about his house. The 
specimens 1 saw were about the size of a geranium. 
" He informed me that the presence of one of 
these plants in a room undoubtedly drove the 
mosquitoes out, and that by placing three or four of 
the plants round his bed at niglit he was able to 
sleep unmolested without using a mosquito net. 
This is very strong testimony to the efficacy of the 
plant, for the house in which Capt. Larymore was 
living is, as I had cause to know well in former 
years, infested with mosquitoes." 
In the fifth volume of Sir VV T Thiselton-Dyer'a 
" Flora or Tropical Africa," Ocimum viride is 
described as follows : — 
" 0. viride, Willd.; Benth. in D C. Prod. XII. 34. A 
perennial 3-6 ft. high, with muoh-brauched glabrous 
stems. Leaves distinctly petioled, oblong, acute, 
membranous, 3-4 in. long, glabrous on both sides, or 
obscnrely pnbescent beneath. Racemes, lax, copiously 
panioled, 3 6 in. long ; rbachis finely pubescent ; bracts 
deciduous ; pedicles not very short. Calyx 1-6 in. 
long ; tube compannlate ; upper lobe orbicular, as long 
as the tube ; lower teeth short. Oorolla half as long 
again as the calyx-lobes. Stamens but little exerted, 
the two upper with filaments toothed above the base. 
—Benth. in Hook. Niger Fl. 4S8 ; Henriqaes in Bolet 
Soc, Brot. X. 149. O fehri/uijtim. Liudl., in Bot. Keg. 
t. 753. 0. heptodon, P. Beauv. Fl. Owar. 11 39. t. 94." 
The plant is figured on plate 753 of the ninth voume 
of the Botanical Register, 1823 under the name 
Ocyiiium fchrifuqum, or .the "Sierra Leone 
Fever Plant." This work mentions that the plant 
is " in request at Sierra Leone for medicinal pur- 
poses," and describes the species as an " undev 
Nhriil) 3 feet high," " having in a liigh degree the 
smell of common balm." 
The leaves of the plant are highly glandular, 
and in India an allied species, 0. Basilicum 
