NARCOTICS AND INTOXICANTS. 207 Nicotiana virginiana) is not grown on a large scale, but its consumption is general, and even little children are smokers. The enormous chibuk is made out of the middle rib of a banana-leaf, with a mouthpiece made of a twisted leaf stuck into the broad end of it. Usually only two pulls are taken, although the tobacco is very good and sweet; but it is taken for granted that the servant who carries away this huge pipe should also take a pull. Hookahs made out of gourds are occasionally used. Chewing tobacco has been introduced by the Danagla, but the custom has never really taken root.

The people, however, chew the cola-nut, a flat fruit of a beautiful pink colour, enveloped by a white covering. The cola-nut tree is often found in the broad “ gallery ” woods of -the country, and is a tall and stately plant; the fruit resembles a short thick banana, with a greenish-yellow shell, split lengthways, and containing two rows of large flat seeds in a strong white covering. When these have been removed, pieces of the pinky pulp are cut off and eaten, generally while smoking. _ The taste is rather bitter, and produces a slight flow of saliva.

Some extol the fruit as a cure for congestion, giddiness, and dysentery, others say that it is a good aphrodisiac. I have not succeeded in proving its specific action.

The taste for beer is universal. It is usually prepared from bananas, almost in the same way as in Uganda, more rarely from eleusine. A drink like wine, rather pleasant and effervescing, is obtained by macerating dry bananas in water, and allowing them to ferment slightly. It usually causes a slight attack of diarrhoea in strangers, just as eating dry bananas causes colic. On this account, the Monbuttu recommend that the dried bananas be dipped in palm-oil before eating them. Occasionally one is offered palm-wine obtained from the Raphia and oil-palms. It is obtained by cutting out the pedicel, and then collecting the sap in a jar, which is covered with a ld to protect its contents from the rain. This operation, of course, would ultimately destroy the tree, and must not, therefore, be repeated too frequently. The oil-palm is of great value, for fatty substances are very rare in the country, whilst the demand is very brisk. Fat is here obtained from termites, _ mberekai (a kind of gourd), sesame, Hyptis, the oil-palm and