younger Linnaeus, in his Supplementum 422, promised 
to publish something at a future time respecting the 
various trees that yield an elastic gum of the same utility 
as the Caoutchouc; but he did not live to execute his 
design. ’”’ 
From the point of view of the taxonomic history of 
Hevea, the genus of the Para rubber tree, the existence 
of a Mutis specimen would be of the utmost significance. 
It would represent the earliest known collection of the 
genus from Colombia, the northwesternmost sector of 
its range. A Mutis specimen would also be of extreme 
importance as it would alter our understanding of the 
distribution of Hevea, for, so far as we are aware, no 
Mutis material was collected in those parts of the Ama- 
zon and Orinoco drainage areas where the genus is known 
to occur. 
For these reasons, we consulted the Mutis material to 
which Smith made reference and which is preserved in 
Linnaeus’ herbarium at the Linnaean Society. The speci- 
men, included in the Jatropha folder, is not a Hevea 
but represents the rutaceous Cusparia trifoliata (Willd. ) 
Engler,’ the type of which was collected in Venezuela. 
Comprising several leaves and an inflorescence of fer- 
tilized flowers from which the corollas have dropped, the 
specimen is mounted upon paper bearing a Spanish water- 
mark. In the upper right corner of the sheet, there is, 
in Mutis’ handwriting, a figure ‘‘89.’’ At the bottom of 
the sheet, the elder Linnaeus had written ‘‘ Hevea’’ on 
one line and “‘elastica’’ below it, an epithet which has 
never been published. The younger Linnaeus scratched 
out the word ‘*‘Hevea’’ and substituted ‘‘ Jatropha,” 
but he did not cite the collection in his Supplementwm 
422 under Jatropha elastica to which concept he reduced 
° Tabula in Humboldt. Plant. Aequin. 2 (1813) t. 97. 
[ 13 | 
