Caapi and yaje was Prestonia amazonica; but the follow- 
ing year, he (21) attributed both to Banistertopsis Caapt. 
The German toxicologist Lewin (14,15,16) named Pres- 
tonia amazonica as one of the plants possibly employed 
as an admixture with Banisteriopsis Caapt. In 1947, 
Sandeman (27) mentioned yaje casually and referred it to 
Prestonia amazonica. Most recently, the chemists Mors 
and Zaltzman (18), arguing that the alkaloid yageine is 
different from harmine, concluded, on the basis of a re- 
view of the literature, that caapi and ayahuasca are refer- 
able to Banisteriopsis Caapi but that yajye was not the 
same plant. 
IL. 
All of the reports concerning the use of Prestonia 
amazonica as a narcotic stem directly or indirectly from 
the work of the British plant-explorer Richard Spruce. 
Spruce’s meticulous field notes were written down in 
1852 but did not see publication until, after his death, 
they were edited by Wallace and published in book form 
in 1908 (29). 
Spruce was the first to identify the source of the caapi 
drink of the Rio Uaupés in northwestern Brazil as a spe- 
cies of Banisteriopsis. 1t was a new species and was origi- 
inally described as Banisteria Caapt. ‘The correct name 
is now Banisteriopsis Caapi. The description of this new 
malpighiaceous species was based upon a flowering speci- 
men collected by Spruce himself. In his notes, however, 
Spruce stated that there was another kind of caap? in the 
same region and that it was called caapi-pinima or 
‘‘painted caapi.’’ In his original field notebook, preserved 
at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, we find the fol- 
lowing entry under ‘‘2712. Banisteria Caapi Mss. From 
this is prepared an intoxicating drink known to all the 
natives on the Uaupés by the name of caapi. The lower 
part of the stem, which is the thickness of the thumb 
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