1075 



' Jetica-eica.' Up to ihis time, no name for the tree appears to have 

 been known in Europe. The name Courbary, or Courbaril, occurs 

 first among French authors, as in Du Tetre, a French missionary's 

 history of the French West-India Islands, published in 1654, and in 

 Rochefort's history of these Islands, published in 1681. 



" Ray, in his ' Historia Plantarum,' published in 1686, copies the 

 description of Piso. Ray had got a specimen, without seeds, from 

 Doody, who was Superintendent of the Gardens at Chelsea. Doody 

 supposed it had come from Antigua. Ray tells us that the plant was 

 reared in Bishop Corapton's garden, at Fulham, whose name is deserv- 

 edly remembered by botanists in the Comptonia asplenifolia, of the 

 order Myriceae. That Bishop Compton's plant was really the Hy- 

 menaea Courbaril, appears fi'om the figure of a branch given by Leo- 

 nard Plukenet, in his ' Phytographia,' who says he got the branch 

 from the Bishop's plant. Plukeuet's ' Phytographia ' was published 

 in 1691. It contains, also, a good figure of the legumen, and of the 

 seeds. He calls the tree ' Ceratia diphyllos Antigoana.' He says it 

 is called the locust-tree in the West Indies, because the pod contains 

 a sweet pulp, like the carob, or fruit of the locust-tree of Europe. 



" In 1703, Plumier, the greatest botanist of the New World, accord- 

 ing to Linneus, described the Hymenaea Courbaril with exactness, 

 under the name ' Courbaril bifolia.' 



" The tree has since been described by many authors, and figured 

 by a considerable number. Among these, are Browne, in his ' His- 

 tory of Jamaica,' and Jacquin, who, though his great work on Ameri- 

 can plants was published near the middle of last centuiy, lived an 

 honoured life nearly to our own times. 



" The supposed medical virtues of the resina animes kept up atten- 

 tion to this legumen, not less than its own singular character as a 

 pericarp, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; and 

 w'heu 1 remark that it has met with less attention in later times, I 

 merely refer to the omission of it in the ordinary descriptions of the 

 legumen in modern works on Carpology, which omission is, at least, 

 to the extent that one tries in vain, by consulting our common books, 

 to discover what this fruit is. 



" Gaertner, however, has given a very complete description of this 

 pod and the seeds, of which I give a portion in English : — 



" ' The legumen large, ligneous, thick, oblongo-reniform, becoming 

 thicker towards the outer extremity, and obtuse, unilocular, valveless, 

 filled with a dry pulp. The pulp exactly filling the cavity of the 

 legumen, externally sprinkled with a red powder like brick-dust, 



