THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [Fee. 1, 1902. 
which the report hopes the anthorities in the Dutch 
iBaat Indies will follow, and it will probably lead to 
a farther increase in the total consumption. — British 
mnd Colonial Druggist, Jan. 3. 
— obvions of the advertising advantages of using 
his own name and address — writes to the paper 
referred to that 'lean say the extent of drag-taking 
today is simply appalling.'— and Colonial 
Drugrjist, Jan. 3. 
PRCMISCUOUS PICK-ME-UPING. 
Why a newspaper which is supposed to treat every- 
thing on multum in parvo principles should, within a 
few weeks, devote three columns of space to matte'rs 
pharmaceutical is difficult to say. First of all the 
public were ' Daily Mailed ' with nearly two feet 
length of printers' ink anent the Privy Council and 
the sals of poisons, Then someone signing himself 
Chaa T King followed with a long account relating 
to the modern herbalist, and now a Mr Sidney 
Thompson contiibutesa column under the attractive 
heading of ' Pick-Me-Ups.' ' If,' he says, ' the 
ranks of our lilnglish novelist'i and playwrights 
contained a single realist of close observation and 
genuine strength, he would do his country a great 
service by showing in play or novel, how English 
men and women are raining their health and dis- 
counting that of the generations to come by their 
reckless persistence with which they indulge in all sorts 
of promiscuous drugs and pick-me-ups.' He goes on 
to relate a conversation he had with an anonymous 
friend whose habit was to go to 'his chemist' every 
morning for his pick-me-np because ' one feels 
beastly limp you know and this chap understands my 
constitution so well.' Further enquiry from other 
friends, supplemented by information from a doctor 
or two, confirmed the writer in the belief that there 
was a growth in the alarming habit of self-drugging. 
One chemist professed to be able to ' tell you tales 
that would make your hair stand on end,' and goes on 
to say that 'A man was inhere an hour ago, whose 
name you know who comes in every fortnight or so 
and buys a bottle of cocaine solution as big as this ' 
he touched a huge cut-glass decanter of perfume. 
He has his doctor's prescription all right, so we 
can do nothing. Another comes in at all sorts of 
times, and asks leave to come behind the counter for a 
moment to inject cocaine into his leg.' People, the 
chemist is alleged to have said, ' does themselves 
according to one or two obvious symptoms, and off 
they rush for a bottip of tabloids.' (What chemist 
would use the word', tabloid' in this general manner ?) 
' Some of the tabloids are realiy dangerous wheu 
taken indiscriminately. These things, for instance, 
that contain strychnine and iron and quinine — I 
always make purchasers sign the poison book for 
them, but plenty of chemists are not so scrupulous. 
Pe-ple buy and take them by the dozen, with the 
result that their systems get full of strychnine, the 
arterial pressure is increased, with a probable re- 
sultant danger of aneurism, and they keep themselves 
in a constant state of mental excitement and irri- 
tation.' 
Again we have a reference to tabloids later on in 
connection with an interview (also anonymous) with a 
doctor. The same doctor spoke bitterly of the evils of 
the tabloid drugs. ' A bad business for the doctors,' 
he said, frankly ; ' but it's a thousand times worse for 
the public' Asked how it was that people can 
procure poisonous drugs as alleged so easily he 
mentioned as a possible explanation, that it was once 
suggested by an ex-President of the Pharmaceutical 
Society, that if a customer wrote down what he 
xyanted on a piece of paper and appended cryptic 
initials, a chemist would be justified in regarding 
the document as a prescription. The writer proceeds 
to speak of the uee <if opium, methylated spirit, Indian 
hemp, quinine, bromides, and winds up by asserting 
that we are fast developing into a nation of drng- 
tkers. 
And the public swallow this spicy conglome- 
ration of anonymous ccnversations I Aye, the 
ipaoTQ readily, and someone professing to be a chemist 
THE SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION TO 
THE MALDIVES. 
PROFESSOR DE, AGASSIZ RELATES SOME OF 
THE EESULT.S. 
Professor Dr. Aga.ssiz and party, who in Decem- 
ber last left Colombo by liie BIss. "Amra," 
for tiie purpose of explorinfr the Maldives, which 
formed the only group of Atoli.^ which tliis dis- 
tinguished scientist had not hitiierto seen, returned 
to Colombo late on 22nd January. It will be re- 
membered that when Professor Agassiz arrived in 
Colombo, we were able through his courtesy, to 
give an account of his intentions in going lo the 
Maldives. We have now pleasure in recording the 
work accomplished by the learned Professor as told 
by him to our representative :— ' We were eone for 
little over a month," said theProfes.sor, ' and during 
thattinie my son and Mr. Woodworth took about 
300 photographs, principally of coral reef snbject.e. 
Favoured with excellent weather— being only one* 
day prevented from proceeding with our explora- 
tions—we were able to return to Colombo 
sooner than we expected. The principal thing 
we did was to 
SOUND THE CHANNELS 
between the lagoons and to develope the plateau 
on which the Atolls of the Maldives have been 
formed. We found as the usual thing 1 hat the princi- 
pal atolls were separated by comparatively shallow 
water in the central part of the group, while to- 
wards the south, between Haduraati and Suvadiva 
and Addu, the depths were very much greater 
nearer a thousand fathoms. We al.so ran a line to 
the Westward ot Ari Atoll into fifteen hundred 
fathoms and one to the South-ward of South Male 
into twelve hundred fathoms, showing that the 
PLATEAU OF THE MALDIVES IS MUCH STEEPER 
on the West than on the East face. And again 
we also ran soundings between the Northern 
Maldives and Colombo and developed the tacfc 
that the Maldives are separated from the Indian 
continental slope by a deep bank of the ocean of 
more than fifteen hundred fathoms in depth. The 
asigregations of islands which had been called 
atolis or. the Maldives are not atolls as sucf-, with 
the exception of the Southern islands like Suvadiva 
Addu, and Hadumati and some of the isolated 
islands like Goidu and Kardiva. as well as the 
Southernmost atolls of the Maldives. These are 
ATOLLS IN THE STRICT SENSE OF THE WORD 
and what has been called Ari Atoll, North Male 
and other Atolls of the Central part of the Mal- 
dives aie only apparently Atolls as the lane' which 
binds them consists of a series of small Atolls 
which are just as much Atolls as the laiger ones 
mentioned above. This is specially well developed 
in the northernmost f art.s, that is Miladumadu and 
Tiladumati. which, in fact, are nothing but a 
ereat plateau without definite outlines, on which 
Atolls exist, sej,arated by spaces of 10 to 15 
miles, just as they would be on any other 
plateau, while on the contrary, on the cen- 
tral part of the Maldives they are oftep 
