1837.] 



Identification of the false Angustura. 



365 



have frequently received it alive from Carthagena along with the seeds. 

 A few specimens of dead Bruchi accompany this. How far the depre- 

 dations of this insect are injurious to the pod itself must be determined 

 by experiment. 



In forming plantations of the Ccesalpinios coriaria the trees should 

 not be closer than 18 feet; whence an English acre will contain 135; 

 and taking the average weight of produce from each when in full 

 bearing, at 100 lbs. the harvest will amount to 135,000 lbs. the nett 

 produce of which when ground and freed by sifting from the refuse, 

 should be at least 101,250 lbs. or 45 tons 4 cwt. and 2 lbs. a return fully- 

 equal to that of the cane, and obtainable from land unfit for producing 

 sugar. — Transactions of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of 

 India. — Vol. III. page 1*2— 94. W. Hamilton. 



Gn the identity of the bark of the Strychnos Nux Vomica with the false 

 Angustura of writers on Materia Medica. — E. O'Shaughnessy, 

 M. d.j Professor of Chemistry, Medical College, Calcutta. 



Few medicinal barks have ever attracted more attention than that 

 generally termed the false Angustura. Introduced into Europe origi- 

 nally as the bark of the Galipea febrifuga, its poisonous properties 

 soon denoted a different Source. The Brucea ferruginea and anti- 

 dysenterica were next suspected, and this erroneous idea continued to 

 be entertained so long, that on an alkaloid being discovered in the bark 

 in 1822, it was named Brucine, in conformity with the supposed origin 

 of the bark: In 1823, however, it was ascertained that the bark in 

 question arrived in Europe exclusively from South America, and not 

 from the shores of the Red Sea, where the Brucea ferruginea or 

 vooginoos, is indigenous. 



The question has continued at issue, from 1825 to the present period. 

 In 1828 was published M. Fee's admirable work on the Natural History 

 of Remedies; and this author, whose elaborate research is quite unsur- 

 passed, describes the false angustura as " Arbor ignota, habitat in 

 America meridionali." Dr. Duncan in the last edition Edinburgh Dis- 

 pensatory, 1830, says, the tree from which the false angustura is 

 obtained " is not yet known, but it is a native of South America, and 

 therefore it is not, as formerly asserted, the bark of the Brucea anti~ 

 dysenterica which grows in Abyssinia." — p. 340. 



In Dr. Thomson's last edition, 1833, p. 226, we find no further 

 information than a brief allusion in a foot note to the existence of the 

 spurious bark, and to Plamba's obsolete observations regarding its 

 history and name.* 



* Nor in the later edition of 1836 is anything new added,— Editor Hadras Journal, 



