THE POISONOUS PLANTS OF BOMBAY. 59 



chewing. It renders the saliva emulsive, and irritates the fauces 

 (O'Shaughnessey). 



Albumen—" Fleshy " says Hooker j " Copious and oily " says 

 Dymock (Pharmaeographia Indica, Vol. III., p. 276, Bombay 1893). 

 It is best to speak of the " Albumen " as Endosperm* 



Cotyledons — broad ; flat ; foliaceous ; adhering closely to the large 

 mass of endosperm. The endosperm cells contain a net-work of proto- 

 plasm saturated with oil. This oil does not exist in the form of 

 globules or drops, though it can be extracted by pressing the endos- 

 perm-tissue as in the case of the seeds of the castor-oil plant. 



Radicle— superior, short, thick. 



Embryo — straight, central. 



GENERAL REMARKS. 



Jatropha curcas is an exotic, naturalized in India. It appears to be 

 a free and rapid grower in this country, not wanting much care. It is 

 a hardy plant, which has taken quite kindly to the soil of Western 

 India whether it be in the Konkan or in the Dekkan. In both these 

 divisions of Western India, I have seen it grow profusely as a hedge- 

 plant, where no human hand has watered it. It evidently takes its 

 nourishment from the air, and from the soil in which it grows, depend- 

 ing mainly on the rain-water and dew, whenever it can get it. Id. 

 the Konkan it gets its water-supply from the monsoon rains from 

 June to October. Hooker says that the plant is ever-green. It is not 

 so in tho Konkan. I have seen that in the Thana and Ratnagiri dis- 

 tricts it is leafless, though in inflorescence during April and May. Nay, 

 in 1898 in Satara (Dekkan) I found the plant leafless in January and 

 February. The plant is a native of Brazil and of the West Indies. 

 From Brazil it is said to have been introduced here by the Portuguese 

 (Dymock). It may be so ; it is probably introduced here from Northern 

 Africa also, by way of Arabia. No mention appears to have been made 

 of this plant by Henrique Van Rheede in his elaborate work entitled 

 Hortus Indkus Malabaricus published at Amsterdam in 1678 in six 

 folio volumes, fully illustrated with the aid of three local Pandits — 

 Rango Bhat, Vinayak Pandit, and Appa Bhat. The Marathi or quasi-- 

 Marathi letterpress of the preface these three Pandits then wrote is. 

 very characteristic of the Marathi spoken and written in Malabar in, 

 the seventeenth century. 



