MATERIA INDICA

CHAP. I. MATEIUA INDICA. 251
The species· in question is called bgha-nulla in
Hindoostanie: it is an annual plant, with a stem,
creeping at the base, but soon ascending. Kamig
informs us, that the lea'oes are linear, acute-spreading,
having coloured sheaths, ciliate, with long hairs; the
.flowers are axillary and solitary; the calyx three.
parted and keeled, corolla one-petalled, of a funnel
form, and deep-blue colour; the tube twice as long
as the calyx; segments three, shorter, blue; filaments
with jointed hairs; style club-shaped. The plant is
a native of the Malabar coast.
Four species of it are indigenous to Jamaica t, and
are there considered to have virtues against the poisons
of all sorts of spiders. Five species are growing
in the botanical garden of Calcutta.
CCXXIV.
NITTAH, or MITHA BISH (Sans.) Jdhar
(Hind.)
This substance was hrought to Dr. F. Hamilton
while in Behar, where he was told rhat in about the
quantity of one grain it is serviceable in the worst
stages of typhus fever: the professiopal men of that
district informed him, that it was a poison to all animals,
man excepted. What it may be in a botanical point
of view does not appear. Hamjlton's 1\1SS.
;\I Five species of tradescantia grow in Ceylon. The species
Malabarica (the tali-plllli of Rheede) is quite common in most
parts of India.
t Barham, p, J 77" a1so Flora Jamaicensis, vol. ii. p.189.