DESCRIBED BY LINN^US AS CL. ELUTEBIA AKD CL. CASCARILLA. 27 



clear up much of the obscurity in which the species furnishing 

 the Cascarilla-barks of commerce have been involved. I willingly 

 leave in his own able hands that portion of the subject which 

 relates to the Materia Medica and the commercial history of the 

 Barks in question, and shall limit myself, in the present brief 

 notice, to the botanical history and discrimination of the species 

 which have been confounded together under the specific names of 

 Eluteria and Cascarilla. 



The first account given by Linnaeus of C. Eluteria occurs in 

 ' Hortus Cliff*ortianus ' (1737), pp. 486-7. Of the plant there care- 

 fully described, an authentic specimen exists in Cliifort's Herbarium 

 in the British Museum, with a portion of the description attached 

 in Linnaeus' s own hand, and marked with the only synonym 

 quoted : — " Cortex IlatJieria. Elutheria Provid. folio cordate subtus 

 argenteo. Sweet bark, s. cortex bene olens. Petiv. Collect, p. 4 

 n. 276." The synonym ; the habitat, " crescit in Insula Providentia ;" 

 and the name Elutheria, derived from the adjacent island of 

 Eleuthera, all bespeak its Bahamian origin. Of this very distinct 

 species, a specimen brought from the Bahamas forms part of 

 Catesby's collections in the British Museum ; and there also exist, 

 in the Banksian Herbarium, a similar specimen of Catesby's from 

 Gronovius, together with specimens from the Herbarium of Philip 

 Miller, from the "Bahama Islands, Long Island," collected by 

 Peter Dean, Esq., in 1788 ; and from the " southern parts of North 

 America," collected by Andre Michaux, the latter sent under the 

 erroneous name of Croton Cascarilla. Linn£eus himself never 

 possessed a specimen ; and having, apparently, entirely forgotten its 

 characters, he referred to it in his ' Flora Zeylanica ' (1748), No. 

 366 (with several other equally erroneous synonyms), the Ma- 

 hapatigaha of Hermann's ' Museum Zeylanicum,' of which no 

 specimen existed in Hermann's collections, and added the officinal 

 synonym of Cascarilla. Of the additional synonyms, that quoted 

 from Breynius, Plukenet, and Seba, unquestionably belongs to the 

 plant subsequently named by Jacquin Croton niveumi ; and that of 

 Plumier and Catesby, as we shall hereafter see, is the foundation 

 of Linnaeus' s own Clutia Cascarilla. In his ' Materia Medica,' 

 published in the following year, he ascribes the CascariUa Bark 

 to the Eluteria of his ' Flora Zeylanica,' with the single synonym 

 of Catesby ; while in the first edition of ' Species Plantarum,' 

 published in 1753, he quotes, under Clutia Eluteria, his ' Flora 

 Zeylanica ' and ' Materia Medica,' Eluteria of ' Hortus Clifforti- 

 anus,' and the mistaken synonym of Plukenet and Seba. Of all 



