MR. D. MORRIS ON ERYTHROXYLON COCA. 881 
On the Characteristics of Plants included under Erythroxylon 
Coca, Lam. By D. Mois, M.A., F.L.S., Assistant Director, 
Royal Gardens, Kew. 
[Read 20th December, 1888.] 
Tue well-known Coca-plant has been noticed and described by 
botanists and travellers for more than three hundred years. The 
earliest detailed account of the plant is given by Nicolas Monardes, 
and published in 1574 (Seville, by Escrivano). A further descrip- 
tion appeared in the third part of his ‘ Historia medicinal,’ pub- 
lished at Seville in 1580. This was translated into Latin by Clusius 
and appears in a condensed form in his * Exoticorum libri decem ' 
in 1605. Clusius is usually, but erroneously, quoted as the earliest 
authority on Coca. The plant was first described as a species by 
Lamarck in the ‘ Encyclopédie Méthodique’ in 1786 from specimens 
brought from Peru by Joseph de Jussieu. Cavanilles (Diss. t. 229) 
figured it from the same specimens, and a representation of it 
also appears in the inedited plates of Ruiz and Pavon (Ie. ined. 
t. 398). The first figure published in this country appeared in 
the * Companion to the Botanical Magaziue ' (1836), vol. ii. t. 21, 
with a description by Sir William Hooker, from specimens 
gathered by Mathews near Chinchas, Peru. 
A full account of the uses, property, mode of cultivation, and 
value of Coca in South America is given by Poeppig in ‘ Reise in 
Chile, Peru und auf dem Amazonenstróme '*, Up to that time, 
and for many years afterwards, Coca-leaves were simply looked 
upon as the source of a nervous stimulant employed by the in- 
habitants of. Peru and Bolivia in the same way as the Chinese 
use opium or the East-Indians chew betel. Latterly, however, 
Coca-leaves have come into prominence in civilized countries as 
the source of Cocaine, a valuable alkaloid possessing anesthetic 
properties when applied to the mucous membranes. They are 
also used to produce a tonic-nerve stimulant. The cultivation 
of Coca-plants in the tropics of the New and Old Worlds has 
elicited the fact that there are numerous forms of Coca-plants 
possessing more or less distinct characters, the result of seminal 
variation influenced by soil and climate. The plants have been 
cultivated for so long a period that their original home in South 
America cannot now be traced. 
* A translation appears in ‘Companion to Bot. Mag. vol. i. p. 161. 
