106 



§ loo. Botanical Literature Memoria botanka sobre el Embar- 



bascar 6 sea la Pesca por Medio de Plantas Venenosas. For A. 

 Ernst. (Del Tomo I de los " Esbozos de Venezuela"). 8vo, pamph., 

 pp. 16.^ Caracas, 1881. There has long existed among various peo- 

 ples, civilized and otherwise, in all quarters of the globe, a method of 

 catching %h by stupefying them— this result being attained by 

 throwing into the water, plants, or parts of plants, which have been 

 ascertained to possess a narcotizing effect upon these animals. This 

 reprehensible practice, against which laws have been enacted in most 

 civilized countries, is concisely expressed in the Spanish word cmbar- 

 bascar, which forms the title of an interesting botanical memoir in 

 which Dr. Ernst has brought together all the facts that he has been 

 able to gather on the subject. 



The verb einbarbascar is derived from the old Spanish word Bar- 

 W which in turn comes from the old Latin plant-name ^«r^«^r«/;/ 

 which m modern times has been altered to Verbascuin. It seems that 

 several species of this genus of plants have lon^been used for this 

 method of fishing, and that the seeds of one of them— F Thapsus 

 the common mullem— were thus employed in Spain as long ago, at 

 least, as the 14th century, when the practice was prohibited by a de- 

 cree of Juan II. These poisonous properties of Verbascuin seem not 

 to have been known tg Roman authors, or at least are not mentioned 

 by them ; but, Aristotle, among ,the Greeks, refers in his History 

 of Animals to a plant called ;rAo//o? as being poisonous to fishes, 

 and states that it was employed in some places for fishing It is in- 

 teresting, from an etymological point of view, to know that this mode 

 ot fishmg was expressed by the Greek verb 7rAo>z<?a?, which was 



thus^used in thesamesensethat the Spanish employ m^a/-/;a,r«r The 



Ztn ^^ ^n' ^^■'^ ^'"^^^^^ ^y translators as Verbascunl and 

 probably correctly, smce, according to Sibthorp (Flora Graeca) V 

 sinuatum and several other species are known in Modern Greece as 

 nXoixo, or qAo^o, Dioscorides likewise mentions a plant rz^;^ 

 ^ia\o. nXarv^vXXo,, which, he states, will kill fish when t iltril 

 urated and hrown into water. This plant, which has been den - 

 fied as Euph^bia platyphylla, L., is still used in Europe for fish in" 

 Coming^wn to modern times we find the number of plants 



nendeS'to Dr^ f''"? '" ^' ^""? '"^'"^^^^- ^^^' enumeration ap- 

 pended to Dr. Ernsts paper embraces the names of 60 species dis- 



Ind^mthX"! '' r'- " ' ""V^"' ''V' ^y "« — ixhTustrv , 

 ^raveT ?nd b!^'^^ ^ '"'"'''''.'^ \ ^'^'-T """ *° ''^'^' «f African 



travel, and by an exammation of Lindley's Vegetable Kinedom 

 wherem are given the names of a number' of ichthyoto^c K 

 which are not found in the paper before us. One of the plants enum 

 erated by the author Po/jgo^uin acre, HBK , we shouM scarcely 

 have suspected of producing iTarcotic effects u^on any animal but it 

 Xm^Hca""'"''^"'' '' "^"^' '' ^ ^tupefacirnt of LhesTn' S^uth 

 Dr. Ernst's paper, which, with him, we think is the first that has 



h,r«;a- enS'" "^ ""'P'' ^'^°- '"" °^- E-t, of a copy of 



