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THE AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
3rd April. 
At the meeting of shareholders in the New Zealand Drug Company (late Messrs. 
Xempthorne, Prosser and Co.) a 10 per cent, dividend was declared, which, on 
the whole, may he considered satisfactory when the competition colonial houses 
have to contend against, both from the old country and America, is taken into 
consideration. Here in New Zealand the majority of retail chemists import 
direct, no doubt considerations of price influencing them in the course they so 
largely adopt. But it is only reasonable to suppose that, if arrangements could 
be made with the excise, many tinctures could more cheaply be made, and of 
much more reliable composition, than those that are sometimes obtained from 
London. The climate here in the North Island is particularly adapted to the 
growth of many medicinal plants, and any one that required a less elevated 
temperature could, no doubt, be successfully reared further south. 
During the Melbourne Exhibition Mr. Piesse did much to point out how 
possible it was to make flower farming a paying venture in Australia. The same 
thing may be urged with equal cogency in the matter of New Zealand. There 
are acres of land in the neighbourhood of Christchurch admirably adapted to 
the growth of lavender and the various mints, and no doubt a suitable 
situation could be obtained from the Government in order to encourage and 
foster a new industry. There is exhibited to-day in the windows of at least ten 
florists’ shops very splendid flowers of the tuberose. Gardenia, sweet daphne, 
and violet also grow well here. These flowers alone, with cheap and good fat, 
should make the name of New Zealand pomade a power in the perfumery 
market. 
The Auckland University have determined in their wisdom to open half a 
medical school here, and on the last day of last month appointed Mr. C. D. 
Mackellar, M.D., C.M., lecturer on anatomy. The college is certainly to be 
congratulated on securing such a man as Dr. Mackellar to inaugurate the work ; 
but being, as they are, in somewhat straitened circumstances, it does seem a little 
short-sighted to rush into further outlay when the departments already opened 
for instruction are at present so badly equipped in the matter of apparatus and 
house room. 
Major Atkinson, an ex-premier of the colony, who has been speaking here 
in the early part of the week, said the people are not sincere in their desire for 
retrenchment. One of the two daily papers in the city thus comments on the 
above: — “At a late meeting of the Council of the Auckland University it was 
agreed, on the recommendation of a Professor, that his assistant should have his 
salary raised ; but it flashed across the mind of one of the members that the 
next Professor would feel that his dignity was impaired if his assistant had not 
an equal salary, and, therefore, to prevent making two bites of a cherry, he 
suggested they should level up the biological assistant also, who otherwise would 
naturally think he had been 4 done brown.’ One of the members, of a practical 
turn of mind, came to the fore, and asked, in his usual cold-blooded way, what 
were the latter man’s duties, for, so far as he could see, there was no use for 
him. Then the trouble began, and there was nothing for it but an ‘ official 
utterance.’ It was said he occasionally did carpentering. A sheep’s entrails 
had been seen in his room, but that was ‘a fluke.’ Sometimes he went out 
of a morning to look for frogs, and now and then he dabbled in distilled 
spirits, but it was thoughtfully interjected that they were medicated, and the 
Customs lost nothing. Strange to say, though the members thought after such 
a category of patriotic service that the biological man deserved well of his 
