George Goodale and Asa Gray of Harvard University, via his 

 son (E. H. Squibb) who resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

 Dr. Squibb had collected ih^^c pareira samples in the New York 

 market since 1865, apparently since he suspected them to be of 

 diverse botanical origin, and sent them to Harvard for profes- 

 sional identification on the basis of Structural Botany''. These 

 samples were either ignored or misplaced for over 100 years, 

 before I found them as indetermined and unaccessioned samples 

 in the Harvard Wood Collection. 



Dr. Ralph H. Wetmore, co-founder of the Harvard Wood 

 Collection and the Bailey-Wetmore Laboratory of Plant Anat- 

 omy and Morphology, wherein the wood collection resides, 



noted that he had never before seen these pareira samples nor 

 the accompanying letter from E. R. Squibb (pers. comm., 1982). 

 Dr. Wetmore also feels certain that the late Dr. Irving W. Bailey, 

 similarly, had known nothing of these specimens. Furthermore, 

 a search of Professor Gray's correspondence in the archives of 

 the Gray Herbarium at Harvard, revealed no communication on 

 this matter, with either Dr. Squibb or his pharmaceutical 

 company. 



Since accurate taxonomic determinations of these pareira 

 hrava specimens were not really possible until this year, at least 

 on the basis of comparative stem anatomy alone, it is not sur- 

 prising that Squibb's queries remained unanswered for more 

 than a century. At the time of my discovery of these materials, 

 fortunately. Dr. Alberta M.W. Mennega (Rijksuniversiteit, 

 Utrecht, The Netherlands) had just published an article on the 

 stem anatomy of the neotropical Menispermaceae (1982), and 

 kindly agreed to identify Squibb's specimens on the basis of their 

 anatomy. 



In reference io pareira hrava shipments from South America, 

 Squibb commented to his son that "within the last half century 

 much of it has come direct and probably many different sub- 

 stances have been sent under the one name." His suspicion had 

 been aroused, in particular, by a recent importation o{ pareira 

 brava from Brazil, to which he alluded in his letter: "On seeing 

 this new lot from Para, it was so different from anything 1 had 

 ever seen before that I expressed doubt as to its being the proper 



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