the 



OF ARTOCAKPrS 



INDIGENOUS TO BRITISH INDIA. 



The genus Artocarpus was first published by the brothers Forstcr in their Charac- 

 ters Generum Plantarum issued in 1776, and it was founded on the well-known Bread 

 fruit tree, which these botanists named Artocarpus communis. The elder Linnaeus, to 

 whom the authorship of the genus has by some authors been erroneously attributed, 

 nowhere describes it. In fact, its first appearance in any of the Linna in writings is 

 in the Supplement to the Systema, published in 1781 by the younger Linna uj, who, 

 adopting Forster's name for the genus, described the Bread-fruit as A. incisa and the 

 Jack as A. integrifolia. Such striking trees as the Bread-fruit and the Jack h; 1 not, 

 however, escaped the notice of other European botanists until so late as 1 ? 1 ; for we 

 find that in the very year of Forster's publication of Artocarpus, Thunberg, under tin 



generic name of Radermachia, described, in the 36th volume of the Proceedings of the 

 Stockholm Academy, the two species integrifolia and incisa. Gaertner, in his treatise De 

 Fructibus et Seminis Plantarum, published in 1788, gave a description and figures of the 

 Jack under the genus Sitodium (the authorship of which he attributes to Banks), and 

 with the specific name caulorum. Lamarck, in the third volume of the E tic y elope die 

 Methodique, dated 1789, enumerates five species under the Fosterian generic name, viz. 

 A. incisa, heterophylla, Jaca, Philippensis, and hirsuta (the Ansjeli of Rheede). Lastly, the 

 Abbe Loureiro, who had been familiar in Cochin-China with the Jack as a tree cultivated 

 f "ts fruit formed for it, in his Flora Cochin- Chinensis , published in 1793, a genus 



which he called Polyphema. In this genus he included, besides the Jack (P. Jaca), an 



in dig 



species which he called P. Champeden ( = Artocarpus Polyphema, Pers.) 



Bv the pre-Linnsean writers the Bread-fruit and Jack had been described and 



fi ed Rumphius (HorL Amboinensis) described various forms, of which these are 



1 lv two under the general name of Soccus. What the other species were, it is 



difficult to make out from the rude figures and descriptions of this writer, and the 



ould hardly repay the trouble. In Rheede's Eortus Malalaricus (vol. iii, p. 17, 

 7b ^26-28), A. integrifolia is described and figured under the name Tsjacca Marum. 



quiry w 



Ann. Bot. Gabd. Calc. Yol. II 



