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SOME REMARKS ON THE PLANT WHICH YIELDS THE CASCA* 



RILL A BARK. By David Don, Esq. Libr. L, 5., ^c. Com- 

 municated by the Author, 



There is reason to believe that many species of Crotmi af- 

 ford a bark partaking more or less of the properties of casca- 

 rilla, and indeed this opinion is borne out by analogy with other 

 genera among whose members similar qualities are generally 

 found to prevail. It is a curious fact, however, that the Croton 

 cascarilla of Linnaeus possesses none of the sensible properties 

 of cascarilla bark. The late Dr Wright, whose knowledge of 

 the medicinal plants of Jamaica was unrivalled, appears to have 

 been the first to determine this fact, and that the bark in ques- 

 tion was derived from the Croton Ehiteria, of which a faithful 

 representation will be found in Sloane's Jamaica (vol. ii. t. 174, 

 f 2), referred incorrectly by Linnaeus to his Croton glabellum. 

 The same opinion seems also to have been entertained by Lin- 

 naeus himself, for in the first edition of his Materia Medica^ the 

 Cascarilla cortex is mentioned as one of the products of Clutta 

 Eluteria, but he afterwards, as now appears on very insufficient 

 grounds, altered his opinion in favour of a plant with which he 

 was entirely unacquainted, except from the figure in Catesby's 

 Carolina (vol. ii. t. 46). Of this plant, which he named Clutia 

 casca?'illa, he had then seen no specimen, and in the Species 

 Plantarum, where it occurs for the first time, he has stamped it 

 with the usual mark of an obscure species. Of Clutia Eluteria 

 he had a sample, from which he evidently drew up his descrip- 

 tion, in the Amcenitates AcademiccE, although he confounded 

 with it a Ceylonese plant, which he had taken up in the Flora 

 Zeylanica from Hermann, and likewise two other totally diffe- 

 rent species, the first figured byPlukenet, which is Croton micans 

 of Swartz, and the second by Seba {Thesaurus^ vol. i. t. 35. f. 3), 

 In the Lambertian Herbarium, there is a specimen from Cura- 

 sao exactly resembling the last-mentioned figure, which I should 

 be inclined to refer to Crotmi nitens of Swartz. The specific 

 character, which occurs throughout all Linnaeus' works, of Clu- 

 tia, or rather Croton Eluteria, appears to refer entirely to the 

 Ceylon plant, whose history is still involved in great obscurity. 



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