SUBSTANCES REPUTED MEDICINAL. 169 
powdered, mixed with finely broken twigs, forming altogether a 
brown herb. So fine is the powder, and so irritating, that the 
most careful examination of a specimen is attended with sneezing. 
The plant is, as far as known, extremely patchy in distribution, 
and the blacks prize it so highly that they travel enormous dis- 
tances to procure it; besides, it is a most valuable commodity for 
tribal barter. They gather the tops and leaves during the month 
of August, when the plant is in blossom, and hang them up to 
dry. They are sometimes sweated beneath a layer of fine sand, 
dried, roughly powdered, and then packed in netted bags, skins, 
&c., for transport. I have examined perhaps a dozen packages of 
Pituri at different times, and they have all been made of netted 
work or canvas. Every bag appeared to be precisely the same 
both in size, pattern and material. ‘The material I believe to be 
obtained by the aborigines from gunny-bags or wool-packs ; these 
are unpicked, woven into circular mats about six inches in 
diameter and folded over the contained Pituri like a jam-tart. The 
bag is then sewn up with fibre of the same material.* Two of 
these bags now in the Technological Museum were obtained, the 
one from Mount Margaret station, Wilson River, south-west 
Queensland, to which place it had been brought by the blacks 
from the Herbert River ; the other also from the Herbert River, 
lat. 23° S., long. 139° E., near the Pituri Creek. In neither case 
can more precise localities of the place from which the Pituri was 
procured be obtained, perhaps partly because the blacks do not wish 
the locality to become generally known, and partly because the 
packages have passed through so many hands. 
Sometimes pituri is chewed in company, a quid being passed 
round from one native to another, and when they have had suffi- 
cient, one politely plasters it behind his ear. It is also smoked, 
and to prepare the leaves for this purpose they are damped, mixed 
with potash prepared from the ashes of suitable plants, and rolled 
* In the South Australian Museum the following pituri bags (amongst others! may be 
seen :— 
1. Skin of small animal, with the flesh-side outwards. 
2. Bag of blue and red stripes, probably of European yarn. 
3. A bag with red stripes, and stripes of the usual unbleached fibre, 
