COPAIBA HI 



"I can not refer to Desfontaines' original (Mem. Mus. 

 Paris, VII, 1821), (377 ), but to judge from the Kew Index 

 and some other authorities, Desfontaines spelled the 

 species name Lansdorfii. And from Desfontaines the 

 mistake passed into many succeeding books. Even 

 Bentley and Trimen took up the mistake, particularly 

 emphasizing that Langsdorfii is wrong. The mistake 

 was pointed out long ago in the Pharmaceutical Jour- 

 nal, IX, (1879), and also by Fliickiger in Phar- 

 macographia, (2d. ed., p. 228, footnote). 



"Some of the botanical authors who happened to know 

 better, corrected the mistake without making any re- 

 marks. Thus, for instance, Baillon has it right in all 

 his works, for example, in Histoire des Plantes, II, 163; 

 also, Rosenthal in his Synopsis Plantarum Diaphori- 

 carum, p. 1046, etc. They write Langsdorffii (with g 

 and two f's). 



"George Heinrich, Freiherr von Langsdorff, was born 

 on April 18, 1773, at Wollstein in Rhenish Hesse, 

 studied medicine in Gottingen, then went to Portugal, 

 where he remained from 1797 to 1803. He then partici- 

 pated in Krusenstern's Russian exploring expedition, 

 after which he became Russian charge* d'affaires in 

 Brazil. In 1831 he returned to Germany and died at 

 Freiburg in the Breisgau on June 29, 1852. He wrote 

 an account of Krusenstern's expedition, under the 

 title, 'Bemerkungen auf einer Reise urn die Welt/ 

 2 vols. Frankfurt am Main, 1812." 



Copaiba (popularly known as Balsam of Copaiba), 

 is obtained from South America, principally from 

 Brazil and Venezuela, being produced by numerous 

 species of the genus copaifera. This genus belongs to 

 the suborder of caesalpiniaae, of the vast order of Legum- 



