402 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 



published ^ by the -writers ; in the present paper we propose to deal 

 exclusively with our investigations of fish-poison plants. 



The principal object of the expedition was the making of botanical 

 collections in the low-lying forested parts of eastern and northeast- 

 ern Peru, known as the montafia. Little botanical exploration had 

 been done in that region ; the small amount that has been carried on 

 has mainly been that of European botanists, as Spruce, Poeppig, 

 Ule, and Tessmann, and their collections have been deposited in 

 European institutions. The party consisted of Mr. William J. 

 Dennis, of the University of Iowa, and the writers, and the general 

 route taken was as follows : Brief stops were made along the Pacific 

 coast of Peru, at Talara and Salaverry, the port of Trujillo, and at 

 Lima. From Lima we ascended the cordillera, and proceeded south 

 along this to Huancayo and Huanta. A three weeks' trip took the 

 party over to the Apurimac River, in the montana, and back to 

 Huanta. Reaching the Chanchamayo Valley by way of Tarma, we 

 then worked slowly over the Pichis Trail, and down the Pichis, 

 Pachitea, and Ucayali Rivers to Iquitos, a city on the Amazon in 

 the extreme northeastern part of Peru. Here the party separated 

 temporarily, Mr. Dennis ascending the Maranon River as far as 

 the rapids of Manseriche, the writers going up the Huallaga River 

 to Yurimaguas and working from there west to Balsapuerto, at the 

 base of the Ancles. The return trip from Iquitos was by way of the 

 Amazon River and the Atlantic, with short stops at the Brazilian 

 towns of Manaos, Para, and Gurupa. This circuitous trip from 

 Lima to Para, covering nearly G,000 miles, gave us a fine opportunity 

 not only to study fish-poison plants but also to discover how little 

 really was known about them outside of the region in which they 

 were actually used. 



This method of fishing does not seem to be employed in western 

 Peru, perhaps because of the enforcement of prohibitory laws, per- 

 haps because of the absence of small lakes or slow-moving streams 

 suited to its use. All we learned at Talara and Trujillo was that 

 Indians in the interior used plant roots for fishing. In Lima there 

 was a surprising lack of information about this means of fishing 

 and about the plants so used. At the University of San Marcos 

 there were a few roots on exhibition labeled cuie and said to be a 

 fish poison of the interior. Dr. August Weberbauer, the eminent 

 botanist of Lima, told us that along the Perene River the Indians 

 used I'ephi'Osia toxicaria in fishing. This is a plant of rather wide 

 distribution in the Tropics of the New World, and its use as a fish 

 poison was well known. We felt, however, that it was not the true 

 cube of which we had heard. 



'Explorations and fleld-woik of the Smithsonian Inst, in 1929, pp. 119-128, 1930; 

 Journ. N. Y. Bot. Gard., vol. 31, pp. 81-93. 1930. 



