pitch. A review of the literature indicates that the slight 
amount of attention which these genera have received is 
hardly commensurate with their economic importance to 
human life in the Amazon forests. Since the latexes of 
all three of these genera are similar in consistency and 
uses (in some cases having the same native name), they 
are treated here together. It appears, nevertheless, that 
the several species of Symphonia are the most important 
pitch-plants amongst the Indians of Amazonian Colom- 
bia. 
Moronobea coccinea Aublet Hist. Pl. Guy. Fran. 
(1775) 788, t. 813 excl. figs. a-f. 
Aublet, in describing Moronobea coccinea in 1775 
(“‘Histoire des Plantes de la Guyane Franeaise”’ (1775) 
792), stated that the Caribs (‘‘Galibis’’) utilized the resin 
of the tree to glue on the points and poisonous teeth of 
their arrows. The tree as well as its resin was called mani 
in French Guiana. The common name mani is likewise 
employed for the pitch of Moronobea coccinea in Surinam 
(van Cappelle, H.: ‘‘Au travers des foréts vierges de la 
Guayane Hollandaise’ (1905) 26). 
Working in the upper Orinoco basin in Venezuela at 
the turn of the 18th century, Humboldt (Humboldt, A. : 
‘Personal narratives of travels to the equinoctial regions 
of America’’ 2 (1900) 857) found the extraction of resin 
from Moronobea coccinea to be a flourishing industry at 
Javita, a small town on the Rio Temi (an affluent of the 
Rio Atabapo). He wrote: 
. .. Inthe forests of those burning climates (where there is neither 
pine, thuya, taxodium, nor even a podocarpus), resins, balsams and 
aromatic gums are furnished by the Moronobea, the icica and the amy- 
ris. The collecting of these gummy and resinous substances is a trade 
in the village of Javita. The most celebrated resin bears the name of 
mani; and of this we saw masses of several hundred-weight, resembling 
colophony and mastic. The tree called mani by the Paraginis, which 
M. Bonpland believes to be the Moronobea coccinea, furnishes but a 
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