Solanee. | THE HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS, 279 
7 116, SOLANEZ. 
The Solane@, remarkable for containing many plants important as articles of diet, 
for their uses in medicine, or for giving rise to an extensive commerce, are allied in 
some respects to Gentianee, and in others to Scrophularinee. They are chiefly found 
in tropical parts of the world, though they exist also in small numbers in cold coun- 
tries; so we have them equally in the plains and on the mountains of India. Thus, 
of the genera found in Europe, Atropa and Hyoscyamus occur also’ in Kunawur on 
the northern face of the Himalaya: of the former, the species Aéropa acuminata, nob., 
is nearly allied to A. Belladonna, and of the latter, the species is the well-known 
_ Henbane, or Hyoscyamus niger, which is here found wild as well as in Europe and 
Caucasus. It has been supposed to be so in the plains of Northern India; but its seeds 
are so extensively employed by the natives in medicine, under the name of Bunj 
(benjé, Avicenna trans.) that it is probable these may have occasionally escaped in the 
course of transmission, as they are also called Khorassanee ujwain. With these there 
is in Kunawur, a new species of Solanum (S. larum, nob.), of a loose spreading habit. 
On the southern face of the Himalayas, there are a few species of this genus, as 
S. lysimachioides and crassipétalum, with S. rubrum, and a species nearly allied to, if it 
be not only a variety of S. Dulcamara on Choor; with Physalis angulata and Datura 
Jerox, Linn., if this be different from D. Stramonium, common in the mountains ; while 
Anisodus luridus, Link, the Physalis stramonifolia of Dr.Wallich, is found on Gossainthan. 
This order, though numerous enough in genera, has the mass of its species belonging 
to the genus Solanum, which occurs in great numbers in the tropical parts of the world, 
but also extends north, as we have seen, in small numbers, as well as south, to New 
Holland and Van Diemen’s Land. Of at least four hundred described species, only 
about thirty occur in India, and these chiefly in the southern parts, of which a few 
extend to the most northern parts, as the shrubby S. verbascifolium, all along the foot of 
the hills to the Deyra Doon; in the open plains, S.izdicum and Jacquini, are common 
every where, with the varieties of or species nearly allied to S. nigrum. The common 
species of Datura, D. fastuosa, and alba, are very generally diffused, as well as 
Physalis somnifera and angulata. The several varieties of Solanum Melongena, or the 
Egg-plant, are every where cultivated in India and in Cashmere. Along with these 
may also be seen Nicandra indica, very closely allied to the Peruvian species, NV. phy- 
salodes, which the natives give as one of the kinds of Kaknuj; Physalis somnifera being 
the other. In the arid country in the vicinity of Delhi, Lycium Europeum is found, 
which like the remainder of the species extends from the south of Europe into 
parts of the Oriental region and into Africa. There can be no doubt that the genera 
Datura and Physalis are common to the Old and New World, and therefore there 
would be nothing remarkable in the Capsicum also being so, were it not unaccountable 
that a plant so universally employed by even the poorest natives of India, and consi- 
dered almost an essential of their diet, should be without any other Sanscrit or Hindu 
names (mirchia and mirch) than those assigned to the common Pepper, with the 
, adjuncts 
