Rudd (21) reports the use of a vividly descriptive name used in 
Florida, where a Piscidia is knownas *‘Jamaica fish-fuddle tree” 
or ‘‘Florida fish-fuddle tree’’. It is likely that this name is used 
also in Jamaica since, as Rudd points out (pers. comm.), the 
name ‘‘sounds like an English-West Indian concoction’ and 
states that the generic epithet Piscidia and its synonyms Pis- 
cipula and Ichthyomethia, were based upon the observations 
that Jamaican natives used these plants to poison fish. 
The term ‘‘barbasco”’ comes from Verbascum, a genus of the 
Scrophulariaceae, some members of which have been utilized 
for centuries as piscicides throughout Europe and around the 
Mediterranean. The common mullein, Verbascum Thapsis, 1s 
the species most often mentioned. At least two other species, V. 
sinuatum and V. undulatum, are said still to be in use for this 
purpose in Greece. 
The Spanish words for mullein are “‘verbasco”’ and *‘gor- 
dolobo’’. As the Venezuelan lexicographer Lisandro Alvarado 
(1) points out, however, the spelling ‘“‘barbasco”’ is very old and 
is connected with ‘‘barba’’ (beard). According to some au- 
thorities, the name of the genus should correctly have been 
Barbascum, in reference to the bearded stamens and the gener- 
ally woolly appearance of these plants. Another possible and 
perhaps more logical explanation of the **b”’ rather than the “*v"’ 
may be the interchangeability of ‘*b’’ and **v’* in Spanish usage. 
‘‘Barbasco’’ does not appear in the Spanish Academy's Dic- 
cionario de la Lengua Espanola. The entry “‘varbasco”’ refers 
the enquirer to ‘‘verbasco’’, where it is stated that “‘verbasco”’ 
is ‘‘gordolobo”’ (mullein) and that the seeds of this plant are used 
‘para envarbascar el agua’’ (to poison water). No further expla- 
nation is here offered, but a search discloses that “‘envarbascar”’ 
means ‘‘to poison water with verbasco”’ or a similar substance, 
to stupefy fish. Indicative of the validity of the use of the term 
‘‘barbasco”’ is its inclusion in Santamaria’s Diccionario General 
de Americanismos, where neither ‘‘varbasco”’ nor ‘‘verbasco”’ 
appears. 
Since Old World fish-poisoning goes back at least to Classical 
times and since this use furnishes a background to the interpreta- 
tion of many aspects of New World use, it merits a brief discus- 
sion. 
The history of fish-poisoning is summed up by Ernst in a 
monograph published in 1861 (4). Ernst, who came to Venezuela 
72 
