578 A N N U A L REG ISTE R, 1816. 



Pohoa Oopas, publishexl in Hul- 

 hmd about the year 1/80. Tlie 

 history and origin of this rele- 

 brateii fort;ery still remains a 

 mystery. Foersch, who put liis 

 name to the publication, certainly 

 was (according to information I 

 have received fiom creditable 

 persons who have long resided 

 on the island) a surgeon in the 

 Dutch East India Company's ser- 

 vice, about the time the account 

 of the C)oj)a£ appeared.* It woidd 

 be in some degree interesting to 

 become acquainted with his cha- 

 racter. I have been led to siip- 

 ])0se that his literary abilities were 

 as mean, as his contempt of truth 

 was consummate. 



Having hastily picked uj) some 

 T;igue information concerning the 

 Oopas, he carried it to Eiu'ope, 

 Avhei'e his notes were arranged, 

 doubtlessly by a different hand, 

 in such a form, as by their plau- 

 sibility and appearance of truth, 

 to be generally credited. 



It is in no small degree sur- 

 ])rising that so palpal^le a false- 

 hood shoidd lunc lieen asserted 

 with so nuich boldness and have 

 lemained so long without refuta- 

 tion — or that a subject of a na- 

 ture so curious and so easily in- 

 vestigated, relating to its prin- 

 cipal colony, should not have been 

 inipiired into and corrected by 

 the naturalists of the mother- 

 country. 



To a person in any degree ac- 

 quainted with the geograj)hy of 

 the island, with the manners of 

 the princes of Java, and their re- 



* Foersch was a si rgcon of the third 

 clas5 at Saniarang in the year 1773. His 

 account of the Oopas Tree appeared in 

 1783. 



lation to the Dutch government 

 at that period, or with its in- 

 ternal history during the last fifty 

 years, the first glance at the ac- 

 coimt of Foersch must have 

 evinced its falsity and misrepre- 

 sentation. Long after it had been 

 promulgated, and publislied in 

 the different j)idjlic journals in 

 most of the languages of Europe, 

 a statement of facts, amoimting 

 to a lefutation of this account, 

 was published in one of the 

 volumes of the Transactions of 

 the Batavian Society, or in ona 

 of its prefatory addresses. JJut 

 not having the work at hand, I 

 cannot with certainty refer to it, 

 nor shall I enter into a regular 

 e.vamination and refutation of the 

 publication of Foeisch, which is 

 too contemptible to merit such 

 attention. 



But though the account just 

 mentioned, in so far as relates to 

 the situation of the Poison Tree, 

 to its effects on the surrounding 

 country, and to the application 

 said to have been made of the 

 Oopas on criminals in different 

 j)arts of the island, as well as the 

 description of the poisonous sub- 

 stance itself, and its mode of col- 

 lection, has been demonstrated to 

 Ije an extravagant forgery, — the 

 existence of a tree on Java, from 

 whose sap a poison is prepared, 

 equal in fatality, when thrown 

 into the circulation, to the strong- 

 est animal poisons hithertoknown, 

 is a fact, which it is at present 

 my object to establish and to il- 

 lustrate. 



The tree which produces this 

 poison is called Antshar,and grows 

 in the eastern extremity of the 

 island. Before I proceed to the 

 description of it and of the effects 



produced 



