Pseudis was first described by Marie Sibylle de Merlon (1647-1717), in her work on the fauna of Surinam (published first in 1705 at Amsterdam, republished in Latin in 1719), as a frog changing into a fish.
In the same year Alonso de Ojeda, accompanied by Juan de la Cosa, from whose maps we learn much of the discoveries of the 16th century navigators, and by a Florentine named Amerigo Vespucci, touched the coast of South America somewhere near Surinam, following the shore as far as the Gulf of Maracaibo.
In Surinam the Jews were treated as British subjects; in Barbadoes, Jamaica and New York they are found as early as the first half of the 17th century.
There are also Jews in Curacoa, Surinam, Luxemburg, Norway, Peru, Crete and Venezuela; but in none of these does the Jewish population much exceed woo.
Since that date this wood has continued in use in Britain under the name of quassia to the exclusion of the Surinam quassia, which, however, is still employed in France and Germany.