376 
Prain . — The Mercurialineae and 
apparent ; the plant is androgynous, so that the deleted name is suitable ; 
but it is a European not an African one, and therefore is neither the plant 
which Royen in 1740 believed to be M. androgyna , Linn., nor the plant 
which Linnaeus himself in 1763 believed to be M. androgyna , Linn. Like 
the species numbered 1, 2, and 3, this unnumbered plant is fully accounted 
for ; it is the species published in 1763 (Sp. PL, ed. 2, 1465) as M. ambigua , 
Linn. The last species in the Mercurialis cover is upon a sheet headed by 
Linnaeus, in larger script, Mercurialis ; at foot, with a pencil c 4’, he has 
written in ink ‘ Croton ’, and then struck this through in order to substitute 
Mercurialis in his usual hand. To this last endorsement Sir J. E. Smith, 
in pencil, has added * procumbens^ Sp. PL, ed. 1, 1036’, and also c Croton 
Ricinocarpos > Sp. PL, ed. 2, 1427’, with a further memorandum that these 
determinations were based upon specimens in herb. Banks. The specimen 
to which these various annotations refer belongs to the South African plant 
of Hermann and Boerhaave. It was in the Linnean herbarium in 1763 ; 
though it is not a native of America, and therefore cannot be Boerhaave’s 
Surinam Ricinokarpos , this specimen, the expression ‘ caulis pollicaris 5 
indicates, is that on which the brief account of Croton Ricinocarpos was 
based. While this much is certain, it is also probable that the reference of 
the species to Croton instead of to Acalypha may be a lapsus due to the 
presence of the cancelled name ‘ Croton ’ on the sheet. There is, at any 
rate, little room for doubt that this name ‘ Croton ’ was struck through and 
the name ‘ Mercurialis ’ substituted when the first edition of the ‘ Genera 
Plantarum’ was under preparation. The circumstance that Linnaeus, 
though he did not write up the sheet as ‘ procumbens ’, did write it up as 
‘ 4 ’ makes it almost certain that the species on this sheet is really the fourth 
M ercurialis of 1753, and that Smith, on the strength of the Cliffortian and 
Gronovian specimens of the same plant in herb. Banks, was as fully justified 
in treating this Linnean specimen as the type of Mercurialis procu 7 nbens , 
as he was in considering it the type of Croton Ricinocarpos. 
The subsequent history of this species has been uneventful. As 
Mercurialis procumbens it was neglected until, in 1866 (DC. Prodr., xv. 2, 
1141), Muller, with less than his customary caution, placed it in the newly 
founded genus Paradenocline . As Croton Ricinocarpos , Linn., it was taken 
up by Aublet in 1775 (Pl. Guyan., 883) ; by Willdenow in 1805 (Sp. PL, 
iv. 1, 551) ; by Geiseler in 1807 (Croton. Monogr., 66); and by Sprengel in 
1826 (Syst. Veg., iii. 877). These authors, following Linnaeus or each other, 
all failed to note that the plant they were dealing with bears little 
resemblance to that described by Boerhaave, or to observe that it is an 
African species to which the locality and the citation from Boerhaave 
cannot apply. In 1821 Steudel apparently noticed that Croton Ricinocarpos 
could hardly be a Croton , for he suggested (NomencL, ed. 1, 524) the 
resuscitation of the name Mercurialis androgyna. This was not necessary, 
