In the cure of the kurap, tetter or ringworm, they apply the daun galinggan (Cassia quadri-alata) a herbaceous shrub with large pinnated leaves and a yellow blossom.  In the more inveterate cases, barangan (coloured arsenic, or orpiment), a strong poison, is rubbed in.

The milky exsudation from the sudu-sudu (Euphorbia neriifolia) is valued highly by the natives for medicinal purposes.  Its leaves eaten by sheep or goats occasion present death.

UPAS TREE.

On the subject of the puhn upas or poison tree (Arbor toxicaria, R.), of whose properties so extraordinary an account was published in the London Magazine for September 1785 by Mr. N.P.  Foersch, a surgeon in the service of the Dutch East India Company, at that time in England, I shall quote the observations of the late ingenious Mr. Charles Campbell, of the medical establishment at Fort Marlborough.  “On my travels in the country at the back of Bencoolen I found the upas tree, about which so many ridiculous tales have been told.  Some seeds must by this time have arrived in London in a packet I forwarded to Mr. Aiton at Kew.  The poison is certainly deleterious, but not in so terrific a degree as has been represented.  Some of it in an inspissated state you will receive by an early opportunity.  As to the tree itself, it does no manner of injury to those around it.  I have sat under its shade, and seen birds alight upon its branches; and as to the story of grass not growing beneath it, everyone who has been in a forest must know that grass is not found in such situations.”  For further particulars respecting this poison-tree, which has excited so much interest, the reader is referred to Sir George Staunton’s Account of Lord Macartney’s Embassy Volume 1 page 272; to Pennant’s Outlines of the Globe Volume 4 page 42, where he will find a copy of Foersch’s original narrative; and to a Dissertation by Professor C.P.  Thunberg upon the Arbor toxicaria Macassariensis, in the Mem. of the Upsal Acad. for 1788.  The information given by Rumphius upon the subject of the Ipo or Upas, in his Herb.  Amboin.  Volume 2 page 263, will also be perused with satisfaction.* It is evident that some of the exaggerated stories related to him by the people of Celebes (the plant not being indigenous at Amboina) suggested to Mr. Foersch, the fables with which he amused the world.

(Footnote.  Since the above was written I have seen the Dissertation sur les Effets d’un Poison de Java, appele Upas tieute, etc.; presentee a la Faculte de Medicine de Paris le 6 Juillet 1809, par M. Alire Raffeneau-Delile, in which he details a set of curious and interesting experiments on this very active poison, made with specimens brought from Java by M. Leschenault; and also a second dissertation, in manuscript (presented to the Royal Society), upon the effects of similar experiments made with what he terms the upas antiar.  The former he states to be a decoction or extract from the bark of the