The first writer to discuss coca use appears to be Monardes 
in 1577. An English translation of his writing appeared in 1596 
under the title Jovfull Newes out of the New-found World 
(Frampton, 1596). 
The first voucher botanical specimens of coca were collected 
in Provincia Sica Sica in the Ungas region of Bolivia by the 
French botanist Joseph de Jussieu in 1749. The species Ery- 
throxylon Coca was described in 1786 by the French naturalist 
Jean Baptiste Lamarck. There are three duplicate types of this 
species preserved in the herbarium of the Jardin des Plantes in 
Paris, together with illustrations made by Jussieu. 
It has long been widely believed that there is in reality only 
one species of Erythroxylon cultivated and employed as a 
narcotic. As in the case of Cannabis — where many botanists 
now recognize three, not one, species — recent intensive re- 
search has established the fact that two cultivated species are 
involved in coca use: E. Coca and E. novogranatense (Morris) 
Hieron. (Plowman, per. comm.). 
Although Erythroxylon Coca has been botanically known 
since 1786, a precise understanding of the taxonomy of this 
group of plants has, as a result of intensive field work, been 
available only in very recent times due primarily to the investi- 
gations of Timothy C. Plowman. 
Species indicated in the foregoing discussion: 
Erythroxylon Coca Lamarck, Encycl. 2 (1786) 393. 
Erythroxylon novogranatense (Morris) Hieronymus in Engler, Bot. Jahrb. 
20, Beibl. 49 (1895) 35. 
MyYRISTICACEAE 
Virola Aublet 
One of the most important — yet most recently identified — 
of the South American hallucinogens is that prepared from a 
blood-red resin-like exudate of the inner bark of the myris- 
ticaceous Virola. It is most commonly employed as a snuff and 
has various names, differing according to tribe and locality. 
The best known names, however, are yakee and yato in Col- 
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