CiiAP. III.] THE GOUA-KADUKU. EUPHORBIA. 101 



coast, and several noble specimens of it are found near the 

 fort of Colombo. 



The Goda-kadm^u, or Stnjchnos nux-vomica^ is abun- 

 dant in these prodigious forests, and has obtained an 

 European celebrity on account of its producing the poison- 

 ous seeds from which strychnine is extracted. Its fruit, 

 which it exhibits in great profusion, is of the size and 

 colour of a small orange, \\dthin which a pulpy sub- 

 stance envelopes the seeds that form the " nux-vomica " 

 of commerce. It grows in great luxuriance in the 

 vicinity of the ruined tanks throughout the Wanny, and 

 on the west coast as far south as Negombo. It is 

 singidar that in this genus there should be found two 

 plants, the seeds of one being not oidy harmless but 

 wholesome, and that of the other the most formidable 

 of knoAvn poisons.^ Amongst the Malabar immigrants 

 there is a behef that the seeds of the goda-kaduru, if 

 habitually taken, will act as a prophylactic against the 

 venom of the cobra de capello ; and I have been assured 

 that the coohes coming from the coast of India accus- 

 tom themselves to eat a single seed per day in order to 

 acquire the desii'ed protection from the effects of this 

 serpent's bite.^ 



In these forests the Euphorbia ^, which we are accus- 

 tomed to see only as a cactus-like green-house plant, attains 

 the size and strength of a small timber-tree ; its quath'an- 

 gidar stem becomes circular and woody, and its square 

 fleshy shoots take the form of branches, or rise with a 

 rounded top as high as thirty feet.* 



1 The teUan-cotta, the use of which to increase the intoxicating power of 



is described in Vol. II. Pt. IX. cli. i. the spirit, 



p. 411, when applied by the natives ^ E. Antiquorun. 



to clariiH' muddy water, is the seed of * Among-st the remarkable plants 



another species of strychnos, S. potci- of Ceylon, there is one concerning 



toi'iim. The Singhalese name is iuffini which a singidar error has been per- 



(tettan-cotta is Tamil). petuated in botanical works from the 



* In India, the distillers of arrack time of Paul Hermann, who first 



from the juice of the coco-nut palm described it in 1G87, to the present, 



are said, by Roxburgh, to introduce I mean the kiri-anguna (Gymnema 



the seedis oi the strychnuS; in order lactiferum), evidently a form of the 



H 3 



