the efforts of demons was to fight them with a stronger 
charm, the spirit in the ordeal poison. 
The following discussion of the various poisons will 
be organized according to the locale in which each was 
used. While there is a certain overlapping between these 
locations and the geographical distribution of the perti- 
nent plants, this system results in far less confusion than 
would a classification based either on the families to 
which the plants belong or on the tribes which used them, 
The families which supplied the bulk of the ordeal 
poisons are the Loganiaceae, A pocynaceae, Leguminosae, 
and Solanaceae. Representatives of the Leguminosae and 
the A pocynaceae are found throughout the continent and 
in Madagascar; the So/anaceae are generally distributed 
in Africa and species of the Loganiaceae occur in both 
East and West Africa. In addition to these, there are a 
number of families each of which supplied one or more 
species to the collection of poisonous ordeal plants. Sev- 
eral representatives of this category are the Combretaceae, 
Sapotaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Polygalaceae, and A sclepia- 
daceae. 
A classification based on the plants used by individual 
tribes is not feasible because the majority of early anthro- 
pological writings refer only to the local name for a par- 
ticular poison. This has resulted in an ambiguity of both 
the nature of the individual poisons and the names which 
were used in reference to the ordeal in general. 
It might also be added that, in many cases, exact in- 
formation concerning the preparation of the poison and 
the identity of the particular plant is incomplete, for the 
native medicine men guarded jealously the secrets of 
their trade. It was only after much effort on the part of 
investigators that the small amount now known was 
discovered. 
The methods of employing these poisons in the ordeal 
[ 269 ] 
