in the New World. Undoubtedly, one of Spruce’s great- 
est contributions to science was his discovery and ethno- 
botanical study of the curious caapt. He found the Tu- 
kanoan Indians of the Rio Uaupés and its affuents using 
caapt to induce for prophetic and divinatory purposes a 
narcosis characterized, amongst other strange effects, 
by frighteningly realistic colored visual hallucinations 
and a feeling of extreme and reckless bravery. This con- 
tribution included a precise identification, through flow- 
ering material, of a source of the narcotic, an hitherto 
undescribed species of a malpighiaceous liana. The liana, 
originally named Banisteria Caapi Spruce ex Griseb., 
is now correctly called Banisteriopsis Caapi (Spruce ex 
Griseb.) Morton. Although Spruce’s observations were 
written down in his wonted preciseness in 1852, they 
were not published until the posthumous account of his 
travels appeared in 1908 (90). In 1852, finding caapi cul- 
tivated in quantity on the Rio Uaupés, he noted: ‘‘There 
were about a dozen well-grown plants of caapi, twining 
up to the tree-tops along the margin of the roca [a cul- 
tivated plot] and several smaller ones. It was fortunately 
in flower and young fruit, and I saw, not without sur- 
prise, that it belonged to the order Malpighiaceae and 
the genus Banisteria, of which I made it out to be an 
undescribed species and therefore called it B. Caapi.”’ (90) 
Two years later, Spruce found caapi in use amongst 
the Guahibo Indians of the upper Orinoco in Colombia 
and Venezuela. Here the natives ‘‘not only drink an in- 
fusion, like those of the Uaupés, but also chew the dried 
stem, as some people do tobacco.’ Again, in 1857, whilst 
working in the Peruvian Andes, he encountered the Za- 
paro Indians using a narcotic known as ayahuasca. He 
stated that he ‘‘again saw caapi planted”’ in the north- 
eastern Peruvian Andes and that ‘‘it was the identical 
species of the Uaupés, but under a different name.’ (90) 
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