nomic Herbarium of Oakes Ames at this institution fails 
to reveal a specimen of ayahuasca collected by White. 
In his report, White stated that the intoxicant was 
prepared either exclusively from the stems of ayahuasca, 
an immense liana with greenish white flowers, or else 
from ayahuasca stems boiled with the leaves of the chaco, 
a shrub with small, globose, red-yellow fruits. Leaves 
of plants locally called cagna and guayavoche may also 
be used with ayahuasca, but White could not ascertain 
whether these were other names for the plant known as 
chaco or whether they represented different species. It is 
unfortunate that so much uncertainty surrounds White’s 
report, but we may feel rather sure (from the common 
name ayahuasca, from his account of the intoxication and 
from recent plant collections in adjacent areas) that a 
species of Banisteriopsis is likewise the source of the nar- 
cotic in this Bolivian locality. 
In several reports, the botanist Rusby, who had accom- 
panied White on the Bolivian expedition, detailed the 
physiological effects of caapi and stated that the drug 
was derived from Banisteriopsis Caapi (80,81,82). Ina 
pharmacological report published in 1924, Seil and Putt 
(88) reported the isolation from Rusby’s material of a 
‘‘fine powder”’ with at least three alkaloids (both phenolic 
and non-phenolic), but they offered no botanical deter- 
mination for the material which they had studied. 
In the same year, 1922, the Belgian botanist-explorer 
Claes, who had gone to the upper reaches of the Rio 
Caqueta, investigated the yaqjé of the Correguahe Indians 
of this area of southern Colombia (10). He learned that 
the yayé, hitherto usually described in the literature as 
‘‘a small bush,’’ was an enormous forest liana. Claes 
argued—lI think quite correctly—that those who had de- 
scribed yajé as a small bush had seen young, cultivated 
individuals and not the vine in its wild state (9). 
[ 16 ] 
