Page:The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/357

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The Red Man's Science
 
331

up fresh in the morning; a nut that made the voice beautiful for singing; a water-weed that stopped cuts from bleeding; a moss that cured snake-bite; a lichen that prevented sea-sickness.

The Doctor of course was tremendously interested. Well into the early hours of the morning he was busy going over the articles on the table one by one, listing their names and writing their properties and descriptions into a note-book as Long Arrow dictated.

"There are things here, Stubbins," he said as he ended, "which in the hands of skilled druggists will make a vast difference to the medicine and chemistry of the world. I suspect that this sleeping-honey by itself will take the place of half the bad drugs we have had to use so far. Long Arrow has discovered a pharmacopæia of his own. Miranda was right: he is a great naturalist. His name deserves to be placed beside Linnæus. Some day I must get all these things to England—But when," he added sadly—"Yes, that's the problem: when?"