178 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



MEXICAN JUMPING BEAN. 



The Determination of the Plant. 



BY C. V. RlLKY. 



In the Transactions of the St. I/ouis Academy of Science for 

 December, 1875, Vol. Ill, page CXLI, I gave some account of 

 Carpocapsa saltitans Westwood, and the manner in which it 

 produces the motions of the well-known Mexican Jumping 

 Seed or "Devil's Bean," and I there called attention to the 

 fact that the particular Buphorbiaceous plant, upon which 

 these seeds occur, was not known or determined. The poison 

 ous nature of the plant, and the fact that it is used by the 

 Indians to poison their arrow-points, have long been known, 

 and, in fact, the plant is called Arrow Weed ( Yerba de flechd) 

 by the Mexicans. The shrub was described to me in a letter 

 from Mr. G. W. Barnes, then President of the San Diego Soc. 

 Nat. Hist., in 1874, as small, branchy, from four to five feet in 

 height, bearing in the months of June and July seeds, a pod 

 containing from three to five. The leaf was described by Mr. 

 Barnes as resembling that of Garambullo, being one-half inch 

 in length and one-quarter inch in width, a little more or less. 

 He described the bark as ash-colored and the leaf as perfectly 

 green during all seasons, and stated that it bore seed only once 

 in two years. In a later letter he stated that, according to his 

 information, it grew only in the region of Mamos in Sonora ; 

 that it is called Brincador (Jumper), and the seeds " Brinca- 

 deros." Westwood, in his original description of Carpocapsa 

 saltitans, states that the plant is known by the Mexicans as 

 Colliguaja, and my old friend, Prof. B. P. Cox, informed me 

 some years ago that the shrub has a wood something like the 

 Hazel or Wahoo, and that the leaf is like a broad and short 

 willow leaf. He confirmed the statements as to its poisonous 

 character and its use to poison the arrow-heads of the Indians, 

 and said that a stick of the shrub, when used to stir the 

 " Penola" of the natives (ground corn meal parched), purges. 

 I have taken every occasion possible during the last fourteen 

 or fifteen years to endeavor to get specimens of this particular 

 plant, with the view of having it accurately determined, and I 

 was very much gratified, therefore, in receiving last Novem 

 ber from M. P. Chretien, a member of the French Entomo 

 logical Society, an interesting communication in 'Which, in 

 asking for copies of my articles upon this insect, he referred to 

 his own rearing of it, and to the plant as a Mexican Euphor- 

 biaceous plant by the name of Colliguaja odorifera Moline, 

 which is a synonym of Croton colliguaja Sprengel. This letter 



