THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[July i, 1884. 



first half of the fifteenth century a Venetian merchant, 

 Niccoli de Oouti, spent twenty-five years in India, and in 

 his exhaustive and striking accounts of the spices and dye- 

 ing materials of Southern India went far beyond his pre- 

 decessors, and may be said to have opened a new era. 



In 1497, just as the Spaniards were iuvading a new 

 world in the west, the doubling of the Oape of Good Hope 

 by the Portuguese discoverer, Vaseo da Garna, opened up 

 a sea route to the East ludies. a feat which his country- 

 men were not slow to turn to advantage in establishing 

 an important commerce. Amongst the officials sent over 

 to look after the interests of Portugal was Thomas Pires, 

 an apothecary, who was first appointed to the " factory " 

 in Malacca, partially apparently iu the interests of pharm- 

 acy, and afterwards was sent as an ambassador from Por- 

 tugal to China. Writing from Cochin, in 1516, to King 

 Manuel, he enumerates the drugs indigenous iu the country, 

 as well as those imported. The information contributed by 

 this Portuguese pharmacist, though still too scanty, was 

 an advance on what was known before. According to him 

 frankincense came to Cochin from Arabia, as well as from 

 Orissa, on the east coast of India, though what this latter 

 frankincense was exactly is not now quite certain. Opium 

 was imported from Egypt through Aden ; but it was also 

 already produced iu Oambaya, north of Bengal, and Bom- 

 bay. The drug was then only " eaten " (probably smoked) 

 by kings and lords on account of the cost. Tamarinds, on 

 the other hand, were so cheap as to be looked upon as a 

 M vergelt's Gott." Pires also met there with aloes from 

 Socotra, Aden, Cambaya, Valencia in Aragon and Sumatra. 

 Among the " gomas fetidas " he enumerated sagapenum, 

 galbanum and opopanax ; but neither ammoniacum nor asa- 

 fcetida. He also mentioned myrrh and liquid styrax. From 

 the mineral kingdom, which was at that time well repre- 

 sented in pharmacy, Pires met with " tincar " (tincal) from 

 Thibet and "rubine," as well as pearls from $he Red Sea, 

 Ceylon and Southern China. About the same time another 

 Portuguese, Odoardo Barbosa, wrote an account of a journey 

 through India, in which he quoted the prices of a series 

 of drugs that he met with in Calicut on the Malabar coast. 

 But a much more valuable contribution to the history of 

 Indian drugs was made by a third Portuguese, Garcia de 

 Orta, who in 1534 went out as physician on board an 

 admiral's vessel and settled down at Goa as royal physican 

 to the hospital. There he produced his famous ' Coloquios 

 dos Simples e Drogas,' in which Indian drugs were de- 

 scribed with a care previously unknown, the descriptions 

 being accompanied by a mass of other useful information. 

 Next to that of Garcia the name most worthy of mention 

 in connection with the history of drugs in the sixteenth 

 century is Filippo Sassetti, who writing to a friend in his 

 native state of Florence, probably from Cochin, discoursed 

 right intelligently of the catechu tree (Acacia Catechu) and 

 Ceylon cinnamon bark. In the next century the Dutch 

 became powerful competitors with the Portuguese for the 

 commerce of these regions, and wrested from them success- 

 ively the famous Spice Islands or Moluccass and Cochin. 

 Some knowledge of the natural products ot the neigh- 

 bouring countries must therefore have become a desider- 

 atum to the new masters, and it was in these circumstances 

 that Hendrick Adrian Rheede tot Drakenstein, the Dutch 

 Governor of the Malabar Coast, ordered the compilation 

 of the ' Hortus Indicus Malabaricus,' which was not pub- 

 lished however until 1703, four years after his death. In 

 this work, which consisted of twelve folio volumes and 

 was illustrated by seven hundred and fifty plates, many 

 of the medicinal plants of Southern India were figured and 

 described. Another contribution to this field of literature 

 from Holland was Barman's ' Thesaurus Zeylanicus.' After 

 the British rule had become definitely established in India, 

 especially by the memorable battle of Plassey, in 1757, the 

 ground was taken up by investigators from our own country. 

 Dr. William Roxburgh being in the front rank. In his 

 • Plants of the Coast of Coromandel.' published in the years 

 from 1795 to 1819, and his ' Flora Indica,' published between 

 1820 and 1832, not a few plants of pharmaceutical or 

 technical interest were figured and satisfactory described 

 for the first time. In 1813 another English physician. Dr. 

 W. Ainslie, in his 'Materia Medica of Hindostau' called 

 attention exhaustively to th.e popular remedies of India, 

 :\ subject which had been, partially dealt with three years 

 before by Fleming in a 'Catalogue of Indian Medieina, 



| Plants and Drugs.' Then followed a number of valuable 

 botanical works, in which, however, pharmacognosy had no 

 special place ; among these may be mentioned Wallieh's 

 ' Plantar Asiatics Rariores,' AVight's inclusive but artistic- 

 ally unimportant 'Illustrations of Indian Botany' and 

 ' Icones Plantarum India? Orientalis,' and Royle's ' Illus- 

 trations of the Botany and other Branches of Natural His- 

 tory of the Himalayan Mountains and of the Flora of 

 Cashmere.' In 1837 this last-mentioned author, who was 

 a medical man in the service of the East India Company, 

 broke fresh ground in the still imperfectly worked field of 

 Inuian medicine and' published an essay on ' The Anti- 

 quity of Hindoo Medicine,' a line that lias been followed 

 in more recent years in Udo Chaud Dutt's ' Materia Medica 

 of the Hindoos.' In 1842 a new phase in the literature 

 of Indian materia medica was initiated by the issue in 

 Calcutta, by the order of Government, of 6'Shaughnessy's 

 ' Bengal Dictionary,' which was but the forerunner of the 

 ' Pharmacopoeia of India,' a work prepared under the author- 

 ity of Her Majesty's Secretary of State by Dr. Waring, 

 assisted by a Committee of native and English experts, 

 amongst whom was the late Daniel Hanbury. We have 

 thus followed Professor Fliickiger through his resume, dating 

 from the earlier notices of separate Indian drugs to a period 

 when they were first officially catalogued and described in 

 a national pharmacopoeia. Here we must leave him, not- 

 withstanding that a flattering mention of the place which 

 this Journal has taken in this field of literature might have 

 excused our pursuing the subject a little further. — Pharm- 

 aceutical .Journal. 



WpOD Ashes. — The best results from wood ashes are 

 secured by adding a small proportion of common salt. Ashes 

 contain all the mineral elements of the plant, and they 

 exert a good influence in unlocking fertility that would 

 not be otherwise available. In burning anything the chlorine 

 it contains is carried off with the smoke, and salt, chloride 

 of sodium, supplies the deficiency. — Coleman's Bwal World 



Dead Limb Evaporation. — " A. J. M." writes ■ — " While a 

 dead limb may be injurious, I do not believe it transpires 

 moisture as fast as a green one in leaf, and if the moist- 

 ure was excessive, its evaporation would be beneficial. 

 Where can we find the facts and figures of this evaporation ?" 

 [A dead limb can scarcely be said to transpire, which is 

 a term wholly applied to the action of a being with life. 

 Moisture simply evaporates from a dry stick, and by the 

 power of capillary attraction, as fast as it dries, it' will 

 absorb moisture from any thing to which it may be 

 attached that is moister than itself. — Ed. G. M.] — Garden. 

 ers' Monthly. 



Pollination op Eucalypts. — On this interesting subject, 

 which was discussed in these columns some time since, Baron 

 Von Mueller writes: — "The pollen is shed on the stigmas of 

 Eucalypts before the operculum drops ; but of course honey- 

 seeking insects may occasionally carry additional pollen form 

 other flowers and even other species, the fruit being poly- 

 spermous. Natural hybrids among Eucalypts are probably 

 rare — at least I do not find transitory forms among the 

 several gregarious species of any one locality, but artificial 

 impregnation would not be difficult. Grossing of the large- 

 flowered species, particularly those having red and yellow 

 filaments, with each other, would doubtless produce new 

 horticultural forms, some likely to surpass in beauty the 

 natural ones." — Gardeners' Chronicle. 



A New Vine Disease in South Africa. — A new and 

 formidable Vine-plague is reported from the Cape. A cor- 

 respondent, writing from Robertson to the Cape Tinas, 

 says (according to the Colonies and India). "On a farm re 

 cently visited by him two hard-working young fellows had 

 planted last year a piece of new vineyard with some 

 20,000 Vine-stocks. The ground being well trenched, and 

 the soil rich, the result of their labour proved most satis- 

 factory until very recently, when a strange beetle made its 

 appearance in the vineyard. The insect attacked the Vines 

 first below the soil, biting off the bark all round the Vine- 

 stick, thus stopping the sap from rising upwards, and there- 

 by destroying the Vine. In less than a week more than half 

 the Vines died from the attacks of this pest. Dr. Hahn was 

 immediately communicated with, and went at once to inspect 

 the Vines. Hi' declared the beetle to be an insect known in 

 Italy, where it frequently attacks and destroys vineyards, as 

 the Vine-leaf Beetle." What is this? — Gardeners' Chronicle. 



