546 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[January 7, 1871. 
The information concerning this insect which the au¬ 
thor has been able to obtain is to the following- effect:— 
The katipo is a small spider, from half to three-quar¬ 
ters of an inch in diameter, measured across the body 
and legs. There are said to be two kinds, one with a 
dark glossy brown or black spherical body and compact 
legs, found amongst dead wood in gardens, or with a 
slight web among the rafters of lofts and outbuildings; 
the other, which is the most poisonous, has a black body 
with a vermilion spot upon its back, and inhabits the 
sandy beaches of the seacoast, taking refuge among he 
driftwood and roots of sedge or rushes found there. The 
author considers the poison to be of a narcotico-irritant 
nature, similar in its effects to those recorded as follow- 
ng the bite of the tarantula. 
In corroboration of the nature of the accident, an ac¬ 
count of three cases of katipo bites mot with by the Rev. 
Mr. Chapman, a missionary to the Maori race in the in¬ 
terior of New Zealand, is appended. In one case a 
native girl was bitten near the beach, and, although 
ammonia was applied, and wine and other nourishment 
given, died after lingering two months. In the second, 
a boy was bitten in the thigh, and did not recover for 
nearly six months. In the third case the sufferer was a 
native chief, with whom the missionary was travelling. 
We give the account of it in his own words:—“We 
were travelling together up the coast from Whatakane, 
and, halting to dine, he seated himself upon a large tuft 
of sedge. He had not been sitting many minutes before 
he sprang upon his feet, saying he had been badly bitten 
by a katipo on the upper part of the thigh. I directed 
him to lie down; I then dissolved some carbonate of 
soda in a very small quantity of water, and, adding to 
this some brandy from my flask, quickly made a crucial 
incision over the part bitten, squeezed out forcibly the 
blood, and rubbed in this antacid solution, keeping up 
this action for ten minutes, when he said he no longer felt 
the pain. He remarked on rising, ‘ Had you not been 
with me, I should have had a long illness.’ Only two 
or three minutes could have elapsed after the bite before 
a spot about the size of the top of the little finger 
appeared, of a peculiar white colour, in strong contrast 
with the dusky shade of Toke’s skin. He was very 
careful to secure all the blood I had forced out of the 
wound I had made by absorbing it in a piece of rag torn 
from his shirt. This relic, now so doubly sacred, he 
carried into the middle of a swamp close by, and I saw 
him stamping it down into the ground very violently, to 
preserve it from possible desecration.” 
SWEET TINCTURE OF RHUBARB. 
Take of Rhubarb, bruised, 
Liquorice Root, bruised, of each 2 ounces. 
Aniseed, bruised, 
Sugar, of each 1 ounce. 
Diluted Alcohol, 2 pints. 
Macerate for fourteen days, express and filter .—New 
York Druggists’ Circular. 
BOTANY IN MEDICAL SCHOOLS. 
In an introductory lecture, delivered by Mr. Leo 
Grindon at the opening of the current session of the 
Manchester School of Medicine, the lecturer, alluding to 
the utility of a knowledge of materia medica, remarked 
that it would especially ill become him to undervalue 
the right use of drugs, since the germ of the science of 
botany was found in the study of the vegetable portion 
of the materia medica by the pupils of Aristotle; and 
although an eminent physiologist and lecturer had quite 
recently expressed his opinion that both chemistry and 
botany should be omitted from the curriculum of study 
in medical schools, he could not but exclaim, God forbid 
that the day should ever come when it should be said 
that medicine was unfaithful to its first love, and that 
the allegiance of more than 2000 years had come to an 
end. It might be that Professor Huxley objected rather 
to the particular portion of botany to which the student 
was too often required to give his first attention,—an 
attention quite as frequently repelled by it as allured. 
The student who was wishful to learn howto distinguish 
Dulcamara from Belladonna , and to possess clear notions 
of the general aspect of deleterious plants as contrasted 
with harmless ones, could not be expected to feel either 
gratification or encouragement in minute details re¬ 
specting- Phyllotaxy and Bothrenchgma. To the student, 
botany so initiated may well seem a useless burden, and 
he (the lecturer) could not see how the student was 
helped towards the practical knowledge of pharmaceu¬ 
tical and poisonous plants by being saturated with 
minute vegetable anatomy. Vegetable histology was 
one of the noblest pastimes of every true botanist, and a 
large acquaintance with it was one of the special orna¬ 
ments of his profession, but to commence with it was to 
enter the temple through the roof instead of the portico. 
He did not believe that Professor Huxley or any ono 
else could deem it superfluous that the medical student, 
in addition to receiving a good groundwork of structural 
botany, with its complement of physiology, should be 
shown, as in their Manchester school, specimens, or 
other intelligible illustrations of every plant mentioned 
in the Pharmacopoeia, and of every plant the name of 
which cropped up periodically in connection with deaths 
by accidental poisoning. That the practical department 
of botany involved in its teaching far more labour and 
anxiety of preparation than was needed for illustrations 
of histology might account for the preference given to 
the latter; and if teachers were not able or willing to 
undertake that labour, it certainly was a reasonable 
question,—had not botany better be out of the curri¬ 
culum ?— Gardeners' Chronicle. 
Tinted Honey. —A specimen of rose-coloured honey 
has been presented by Messrs. Fortnum and Mason to 
the Food Department of the South Kensington Museum. 
It is of great beauty and delicacy. The comb is virgin, 
the wax almost white, the honey limpid, pure and of 
the colour of pale red currant jelly. The secret of its 
production is not revealed, except that it is the result of 
artificial feeding. The Gardeners' Chronicle, after allud¬ 
ing to the various opinions held as to the change which 
honey undergoes between the time of its being taken 
from the nectary and that of its being deposited in the 
comb, remarks that honey from white clover has a green¬ 
ish-white hue, that from heather a rich golden yellow, 
and no doubt other colours might be observed according 
as certain flowers are in particular abundance. It is 
even possible that feeding the bees upon currant or rasp¬ 
berry jelly or jam would answer the purpose equally 
well. But it is clear that this step in the refinement of 
honey being reached, we shall not stop here. With the 
help of the chemist, the beekeeper will be able to turn 
out, in a few weeks, to order, honey of any hue, blue, 
pea-green, orange, or apricot-coloured, or even,—by a 
little ingenious manipulation of the present system of 
hives, which will allow of any part of the comb being 
shut off or made accessible to the bees at pleasure,—a 
parti-coloured honey, arranged in artistic patterns and 
devices. 
Wax-Varnish, —Benzine will dissolve a large pro¬ 
portion of wax, especially when heated to the boiling- 
point, which can be easily effected without danger of 
explosion, by placing a bottle containing the liquid in 
water heated to between 150° to 200° F. The solution, 
however, will deposit a cloudy sediment upon cooling. 
Nevertheless, it can be readily used for producing wax 
paper, or, in fact, for all manipulations where the object 
is to produce a thin uniform coating of wax on any 
foreign substance. The benzine evaporates completely 
