44 Linnaan Society. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



LINNiEAN SOCIETY. 



December 17. — Mr. Forster, V.P., in the Chair. 



Specimens of the Lagurus ovatus collected last summer at Sewer's 

 End, two miles from SaiFron Walden, were presented by Mr. Gum- 

 ming, who discovered the plant about three years ago in that locality, 

 which is its only actual English station. 



Read, " Description of the Curata, a plant of the tribe of Bamhusece, 

 of the culm of which the Indians of Guiana prepare their Sarbacans 

 or Blow-pipes." By Robert H. Schomburgk, Esq., communicated 

 by the Secretary. 



Referring to a passage in Baron Humboldt's " Personal Narra- 

 tive" of his Travels in America, in which the learned author de- 

 scribes the reeds of which the Indian Blow-pipes are made, and re- 

 grets his inability to determine from what plant they were obtained, 

 Mr. Schomburgk states it to have been a point of the greatest in- 

 terest with him in his recent journeys in the interior of Guiana to 

 ascertain this fact. He found that the Macusi tribe of Indians ob- 

 tained these remarkable reeds by barter from the Arecunas, w^ho 

 again made journeys of several months' duration to the westward to 

 procure them from the Maiongcong and Guinan Indians, to whose 

 country they are restricted, and who have thence acquired among 

 the other natives the appellation of the Curata people. The Are- 

 cuna thus becomes the medium of the barter carried on of blow- 

 pipes on the one hand for Urari poison on the other, the latter being 

 found in the district inhabited by the Macusi, and exchanged by 

 them for the tube through which the arrows impregnated with it are 

 discharged with such deadly effect. It was at a settlement of Maiong- 

 cong Indians near the river Emaruni that Mr. Schomburgk at last 

 succeeded in obtaining positive information of the locality of these 

 reeds, which he was informed were found on two lofty mountains, 

 named by the Indians Mashiatti and Marawacca, the former of which 

 was pointed out to him at the distance of about 20 miles. The latter 

 however lying more directly on his route was visited by him in pre- 

 ference ; it is seated at a day's journey from a Maiongcong settle- 

 ment on the banks of the Cuyaca, from whence the natives showed 

 the beaten track. After having ascended the mountain to a height 

 of about 3500 feet above the Indian village, the traveller followed the 

 course of a small mountain stream, on the banks of which the Curas 

 or Curatas, as these reeds are called by the Indians, grow in dense 

 tufts. They form in general clusters of from forty to a hundred 

 gtems, which are pushed forth, as in many other Bambusca, from a 



