PISH POISONS — KILLIP AND SMITH 407 



Curiously not a single plant, cultivated or wild, was found in flower 

 or fruit. That this was not due to our trip having been made out 

 of season is evidenced by the univei-sal testimony of owners of ])lan- 

 tations, whose powers of observation are remarkably keen, that the 

 plant " did not have flowers." We can only suggest certain explana- 

 tions for this condition. Possibly the plant does not flower until 

 after several years of growth when it has become a high-climbing 

 liana. As the trees in actual cultivation are dug at the end of the 

 third or fourth year, the great majority of the plants that we saw 

 or that were seen by natives with whom we came in contact were 

 not old enough to produce flowei*s. Or possibly during centuries 

 of cultivation it has been found that the poison content is more po- 

 tent in nonllowering individuals. 



Other plants cultivated as fish poisons in the Iquitos region and 

 along the lower Ilualhiga Kiver are Tephros'ia toxkaria^ here some- 

 times called tirano harhasco, and CHhadluiii aylvestre and C. hetero- 

 trichum, both known as guaco or hiMca. 



Our trip across Brazil was unfortunately a hurried one, and we 

 made no thorough study of fish poisons. Questioning of the natives 

 who live along the banks of the Amazon brought little information 

 about the practice. It was only after painstaking search during stops 

 at Manaos, Para, and Gurupa tliat we were able to see the plants 

 growing. A few scattered plants of L. nicou were found near these 

 settlements. Near Manaos there was a planting of over a thousand 

 shrubs of another species of Lanchocarpus^ L. flonhundus Benth., 

 the roots of which were said to be very effective as a fish poison. 

 These plants were in fine flower and fruit. At Gurupa on the lower 

 Amazon, there was a third species, Lonchocarpus uruca Killip and 

 Smith, which was considered to be even more powerful than Loncho- 

 carpus nicou. Other fish poisons cultivated about Para were Te- 

 phrosia tooeicaria^ Tephrosia eviarginata^ and Clihadmin sylvestre. 

 On our entire Amazon trip we learned nothing of the many other 

 plants mentioned by Martins and Kadlkofer as being used to obtain 

 fish. Here, as in many other places, this mode of fishing is being 

 abandoned because of prohibitory laws. At Manaos all agreed 

 that the Indians of the upper Rio Negro and the Rio Branco used 

 plants almost exclusively in fishing. 



In Amazonian Brazil the prevailing name for fish poisons was 

 timbo, modifications of this being used for the different plants, as 

 thnho legithiio for Lonchocarpus Jiicou, tltnho urucu for Z. urucu^ 

 timho cururd for L. rariflorus^ a conmion plant though apparently 

 not used as a fish poison, and tinibo de Cayenne for Tephroaia 

 toxicaria. 



•In our previous paper we referred to this plant as Oracca nitons (Tephroaia nitent), 

 the name commonly used for this close relative of T. toricuriu in the lower Ama/un 

 region. True Tephroaia nitent apparently is dlstincL 



