60 JOURNA L, BOMB A Y NA TUBA L HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XY. 



Jatropha curcas, however, appears to Lave been mentioned in Bhav- 

 Prakash, a Sanskrit work describing several Indian plants. "Its author, 

 Bkav Misra," says Dattaram Chobhe, " flourished in Madras about 350 

 years ago." Surgeon- Goneral Balfour of Madras says that Bhav Misra 

 flourished so far back as 1550 A. D. It is possible then that the Portu- 

 guese must have introduced the plant into India. Sir George Bird wood 

 says that ''Jatropha cnrcas was first mentioned by Monardes" (Veg. 

 Products, Bombay Presidency, page 77 and page 308, 2nd ed. Bombay, 

 1865). Monardes is evidently a misprint for Monardus, for no such 

 name as Monardes is mentioned by Professor Sachs in his History of 

 Botany (1530 — 1860), published at Wurzburg in 1875, and translated 

 into English by Garnsey and Professor Balfour in 1890 (Oxford). I 

 find, however, from John Gerarde's Herb all that Thomas Johnson, an 

 Apothecary of London who re-edited Gerarde's Herball in 1663 A.D., 

 mentions an American writer named Nicolas Monardus. Johnson, in 

 addressing his readers in a prefatory note, speaks of Nicolas Monardus 

 as being a writer on the simple medicines of the West Indies. Evi- 

 dently Monardus flourished about the middle or end of the sixteenth 

 century. From Johnson's remarks in Gerarde, I find that the works 

 of Monardus, originally written in Spanish, were translated into Latin 

 by Carolus Clusius between 1583 and 1601. " Carolus Clusius," says 

 Johnson, il was a learned, diligent, and laborious HerharistP Carolus 

 Clusius, a Frenchman by birth, was otherwise named Charles de 

 l'^oluse. He was born in Arras in 1526. His family suffered from 

 religious persecution in France, and he spent the greater part of his 

 life in Germany and the Netherlands. In 1573 he was invited to the 

 Imperial Court of Vienna by Maximilian II. Clusius accepted the 

 invitation and removed to Vienna. Subsequently in 1593 he became 

 Professor of Botany in Leyden and died there in 1609 (Sachs). 



O'Shaughnessey notes that Jatropha curcas is a native of New Anda- 

 lusia and Havana (in the Island of Cuba). A. de Jussieu says that it is 

 also a native of North Africa. Now, it is a well-kuown fact that India, 

 especially its Western Coast, and North Africa, through Arabia, have 

 for several centuries past been in close mercantile intercourse with each 

 other. It is, therefore, just possible that Jatropha curcas was intro- 

 duced into India by the mercantile Arab and Afric visitants of the 

 shores of Western India. But I have no authentic information on this 

 point. It is a mere surmise of mine. The Afric coast has given to the 



