1888 - 89 .] Dr Thomas R. Fraser on Strophanthus hispidus. 75 
at his suggestion, the follicles were brought to this country by Mr E, 
D. Young, R.N., when he went to Africa, in 1867, to clear up the 
story of Livingstone’s murder. 
Sir John Kirk had previously discovered that the Kombe poison 
is prepared from the seeds contained in these follicles. In a letter 
received from him (31st October 1888), he thus describes the dis- 
covery: — “ I had long sought for it (the source of the Kombe 
poison), but the natives invariably gave me some false plant, until 
one day at Chibisa’s village, on the river Shire, I saw the ‘ Kombe,’ 
then new to me as an Eastern African plant (I had known an allied 
species at Sierra Leone (1858), where it is used as a poison). There, 
climbing on a tall tree, it was in pod, and I could get no one to go 
up and collect specimens. On mounting the tree myself to reach 
the Kombe pods, the natives, afraid that I might poison myself if I 
handled the plant roughly or got the juice in a cut or in my mouth, 
warned me to be careful, and admitted that this was the 1 Kombe ’ 
or poison plant. In this way the poison was identified.” 
Livingstone, in his Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi 
and its Tributaries (1858-1864), states that the tribes inhabiting 
the Mikuru-Madse, a tributary of the Shire river, use this poison 
for arrows, with which they kill buffaloes and other game. 
“ Poisoned arrows are made in two pieces. An iron barb is fastened 
to one end of a small wand of wood, ten inches or a foot in length, 
the other end of which, fined down to a long point, is nicely fitted, 
though not otherwise secured, in the hollow of the reed, which 
forms the arrow shaft. The wood immediately below the iron head 
is smeared with the poison. When an arrow is shot into the animal, 
the reed falls to the ground at once, or is very soon brushed off by 
the branches, but the iron barb and poisoned part of the wood 
remain in the wound. If made in one piece, the arrow would often 
be torn out, head and all, by the long shaft catching in the under- 
wood, or striking against trees.” 
Mr John Buchanan thus describes the method followed in pre- 
paring the poison : — “ A man breaks a follicle and puts the seeds 
with the wool attached into a pot. He then takes a small piece of 
bamboo, which has two thin splints inserted crosswise in the end, 
and he revolves this speedily by rubbing it between his hands. 
The seeds are thus put into motion, and fall to the bottom of the 
