350 PLANTS IN USE BY THE NATIVES OP NEW GUINEA, 



There are at the Maclay-Coast some other fruits which are 

 gathered in the forest, whose systematical names however remain 

 for the present unknown to me. I mention here the following 

 names of Papuan fruits, which I frequently saw eaten and 

 which I have tasted more than once myself without finding them 

 either nasty or nice. They are : — 



23. Aival 



24. Bugger. 



25. Kabul 



26. Aid. 



II. Cultivated plants used as stimulants and medicine. 



27. Arpxa catechu is cultivated in eveiy village and the kernel 

 of the nut is used at the difterent stages of maturity, but young 

 nuts are preferred. 



28. Pipe7' betel. The fruits are used in preference to the leaves. 

 The natives of the jMaclay-Coast have no remembrance, if the use 

 of this (Areca-betel-lime) chewing combination has been introduced 

 amongst them, by whom and when. Generally, the men are very 

 fond of this stimulant, but very few use the same to excess. 



29. Piper meihysticum (Keu). The first mention of the use of 

 the Piper methysticum by the natives of New Guinea, is, as far as 

 I know, to be found in my letter to the Imp. Geogr. Society of St. 

 Petersburg (1). When I showed in 1873, some dried leaves and 

 fruits of the keu of the Maclay-Coast to Dr. Scheflfer, he told me, 

 that none had ever been brought by ti'avellers returning from 

 New Guinea and not having specimens of P. methysticum in the 

 collection of the Botanical Museum of the garden of Buitenzorg, 

 nor sufficiently complete descriptions of the plant, he was not able 

 to tell me positively ifthe^ew of New Guinea (2) is identical with it, 

 the kava (P. methysticum) plant of the South Sea Islands. 



(1) " Iswestia " of the Imp. Russian Geographical Society for 1874, Vol. 

 X., p. 83. 



(2) Keu is the name of P. methysticum in the dialect of Bongu, but in the 

 other dialect of the same coast it is called : keuva, Use, kial, ayo, sei/u, etc. 



