Chapter UJUNGTANAH to UMBRELLA of U by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

to which we have alluded at the beginning of this article. This effect may, however, have been due not so much directly to the article in the London Magazine as to the adoption of the fable by the famous ancestor of a man still more famous, Erasmus Darwin, in his poem of the Loves of the Plants. In that work not only is the essence of Foersch’s story embodied in the verse, but the story itself is quoted at length in the notes. It is said that Darwin was warned of the worthlessness of the narrative, but was unwilling to rob his poem of so sensational an episode.

Nothing appears to be known of Foersch except that there was really a person of that name in the medical service in Java at the time indicated. In our article ANACONDA we have adduced some curious particulars of analogy between the Anaconda-myth and the Upas-myth, and intimated a suspicion that the same hand may have had to do with the spinning of both yarns.

The extraordinary éclat produced by the Foerschian fables led to the appointment of a committee of the Batavian Society to investigate the true facts, whose report was published in 1789. This we have not yet been able to see, for the report is not contained in the regular series of the Transactions of that Society; nor have we found a refutation of the fables by M. Charles Coquebert referred to by Leschenault in the paper which we are about to mention. The poison tree was observed in Java by Deschamps, naturalist with the expedition of D’Entrecasteaux, and is the subject of a notice by him in the Annales de Voyages, vol. i., which goes into little detail, but appears to be correct as far as it goes, except in the statement that the Anchar was confined to Eastern Java. But the first thorough identification of the plant, and scientific account of the facts was that of M. Leschenault de la Tour. This French savant, when about to join a voyage of discovery to the South Seas, was recommended by Jussieu to take up the investigation of the Upas. On first enquiring at Batavia and Samarang, M. Leschenault heard only fables akin to Foersch’s romance, and it was at Sura Karta that he first got genuine information, which eventually enabled him to describe the tree from actual examination.

The tree from which he took his specimens was more than 100 ft. in height, with a girth of 18 ft. at the base. A Javanese who climbed it to procure the flowers had to make cuts in the stem in order to mount. After ascending some 25 feet the man felt so ill that he had to come down, and for some days he continued to suffer from nausea, vomiting, and vertigo. But another man climbed to the top of the tree without suffering at all. On another occasion Leschenault, having had a tree of 4 feet girth cut down, walked among its broken branches, and had face and hands besprinkled with the gum-resin, yet neither did he suffer; he adds, however, that he had washed immediately after. Lizards and insects were numerous on the trunk, and birds perched upon the branches. M. Leschenault gives details of the preparation of the poison as practised by the natives, and also particulars of its action, on which experiment was made in Paris with the material which he brought to Europe. He gave it the scientific name by which it continues to be known, viz. Antiaris toxicaria (N.O. Artocarpeae).⁴

M. Leschenault also drew the attention of Dr. Horsfield, who had been engaged in the botanical exploration of Java some years before the British occupation, and continued it during that period, to the subject of the Upas, and he published a paper on it in the Batavian Transactions for 1813 (vol. vii.). His account seems entirely in accordance with that of Leschenault, but is more detailed and complete, with the result of numerous observations and experiments of his own. He saw the Antiaris first in the Province of Poegar, on his w ay to Banyuwangi. In Blambangan (eastern extremity of Java) he visited four or five trees; he afterwards found a very tall specimen growing at Passaruwang, on the borders of Malang, and again several young trees in the forests of Japara, and one near Onarang. In all these cases, scattered over the length of Java, the people knew the tree as anchar.

Full articles on the subject are to be found (by Mr. J. J. Bennet) in Horsfield’s Plantae Javanicae Rariores, 1838–52, pp. 52 seqq., together with a figure of a flowering branch pl. xiii.; and in Blume’s Rumphia (Brussels, 1836), pp. 46 seqq., and pls.xxii., xxiii.; to both of which works we have been much indebted for guidance. Blume gives a drawing, for the truth of which he vouches, of a tall specimen of the trees. These he describes as “vastas, arduas, et a ceteris segregatas,”—solitary and eminent, on account of their great longevity, (possibly on account of their being spared by the axe ?), but not for any such