242 



THE JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY. 



shown by Cavanilles' figure, but also with various wild plants with ovate- 

 acuminate leaves. 



This conclusion is reached from a study of specimens of my own collect- 

 ing, the history of which was carefully ascertained. There is a way of 

 determining the ancestral form of a cultivated plant, and this is to study 

 it in its reverted state of wildness. The difficulty with previously collected 

 wild specimens of the coca plant is that their history was unknown or 

 uncertain. Among my own specimens there are a number of which this 



Fig. 3. Erythroxylon Coca Lamarck 

 (After Hooker, per Morris. ) 



Fig. 5 Wild, sun-grown coca leaves. 



was not true. Specimens were collected in old " cocales " which had 

 been abandoned for nearly half a century, one for a much longer period. 

 I have, in previous publications, referred to the modifications of the culti- 

 vated form'which these leaves have undergone, but their full description 

 and bearing are only now pointed out. My attention was first called to 

 them by an old German gardener, Herr Lohse, who had long grown the 

 coca plant near the Coroico. He offered to show me some wild coca 

 plants, and did so. They were growing in a ravine near where cultivation 



