THE POISONOUS PLANTS OF BOMBAY. 243 



I may add here that, although on the authority of Mr. Masters 

 I have ventured to state that the seeds of the marking-nut tree are 

 called Malacca-beans, the plant known in American works as the 

 Malacca-bean plant should not be confounded with the marking-nut 

 tree. The former is the Avicennia tomentosa^ Jacquin, of the Natural 

 Order Myoporince, R. Brown. It is now classed under the Natural 

 Order Verbenacece by Bentham and Hooker, and is also known under 

 the name Linnseus originally gave it, namely, Avicennia officinalis. It 

 grows abundantly as a straggling shrub on the entire Bombay and 

 Salsette Coasts in their widely extending marshes. This Malacca-bean 

 plant of the American Botanists, essentially ripal in its habitat, is an 

 entirely distinct plant from the inland and jungle-loving marking-nut 

 tree. The Malacca-bean plant is known to, and described by, American 

 Botanists as the Soft-leaved Avicennia. Witness the following observa- 

 tions of Mr. Thomas Nuttall, F. l. s.:— "The Avicennia or Malacca- 

 bean, according to Hheed, becomes a tall and graceful tree on the coast 

 of India, rising to the height of 70 feet, with a trunk of 16 feet in 

 circumference, sustaining a pyramidal and somewhat orbicular summit 

 of dense and dark verdure. The wood is whitish, covered with a grey 

 bark, and is employed for many economical purposes. The kernels, 

 naturally bitter, deprived of this quality by steeping and boiling in 

 water, are then sufficiently edible, and known to the Hindus by the 

 name of Caril ; an oil may also be expressed from them as from the 

 nuts of the Anacardiumr (Nuttall's North American Sylva, Vol. Ill, 

 p. 79). In reading the above account in Mr. Nuttall's work, what 

 puzzles me most is, why Mr. Nuttall gives Anacardium {Bauhin^ Pinax, 

 p. 511 ; Oepata. Rheed, Malab. Vol. 4, p. 95, tab. 45) as one of the 

 synonyms of Avicennia tomentosa. The two natural orders, namely, 

 Anacardiacece and Verbenacece to which Anacardium and Avicennia 

 respectively belong, are as far removed from each other as they possibly 

 can be among the Flowering plants. To sum up, it is necessary to 

 remember that the Malacca-bean plant is entirely different from the 

 marking-nut tree producing the so-called Malacca-beans of Masters. 



The cotyledons of the marking-nut, when mature, yield a bland 

 sweet oil, which is entirely free from acrid property. That the 

 pericarp should contain a highly acrid and corrosive oil, nay, indeed, 



