28 MR. BENNETT ON THE SPECIES OF CROTON 
these, it is evident that the only true synonym is that of ‘ Hortus 
Cliffortianus,’ from which the name of the species was derived. 
Up to this time Linneus had in his own herbarium no 
spécimen referred to Clutia Eluteria; and there is no indication 
by which it can be positively determined whence and at what 
period the specimen which he subsequently designated by that 
name was obtained. It appears probable, however, that it was 
one of the Jamaica specimens received by him from Patrick 
Browne, and described in his * Pugillus Plantarum Jamaicensium ' 
(1759), inserted in the fifth volume of his * Amcnitates Academic." 
The description which he there gives (p. 411) of Clutia Eluteria 
is quite inapplicable to the original plant, and exactly agrees with 
this specimen. In the second edition of ‘Species Plantarum,’ 
he refers to this description, adds Patrick Browne’s synonym, and 
retains that of ‘Hortus Cliffortianus,’ as well as the erroneous 
reference to Plukenet and Seba. It is only necessary to add, that 
in Swartz’s ‘ Flora Indis Occidentalis? (p. 1183), Patrick Browne’s 
plant is properly referred to the genus Croton, and is carefully de- 
scribed, under the name of Croton Eluteria, as synonymous with 
Clutia Eluteria, L., and that a figure of the true or Bahamian 
species, taken from one of Mr. Dean's specimens in the Banksian 
Herbarium, is given in Woodville's * Medical Botany,’ t. 228, to- 
gether with a sketch of a miserable scrap of the Jamaica plant 
from a specimen communicated to the same Herbarium by Dr. 
Wright, who, in the eighth volume of the ‘ Medical Journal,’ de- 
scribes it as producing “the Cascarilla or Elutheria of the 
shops.” 
I now turn to the second species, Clutia Cascarilla, L. Linnæus 
had originally no knowledge of this species, except that which he 
derived from the figure of Catesby and the synonym of “ Ricinoides 
eleagni folio," quoted by Catesby from Plumier; and both of 
these he referred, in his ‘Flora Zeylanica, to the confused heap 
there collected under the head of Eluteria foliis cordato-lanceolatis. 
The same confusion between the Bahamian and the Ceylonese 
species was continued in his ‘Materia Medica’; but in the first 
edition of ‘Species Plantarum’ he distinguished the plant figured 
by Catesby under the name of Clutia Cascarilla,—mistaking, how- 
ever, the habitat, which Catesby indicates as the Bahamas, and 
substituting Carolina in its stead. As he denotes by his usual 
symbol (+) that he had never seen this species, and quotes no other 
synonym than that of Catesby, there can be no question that the 
species is wholly founded on the figure and description of that 
