C2 Dr. Hancock- on Sarsaparilla. 



proportion indeed, are to be considered as possessing any very 

 marked medicinal properties. 



The species just alluded to, as possessing some active proper- 

 ties, grows on the declivities of the hills and mountains up the 

 Essequebo, and doubtless in various other parts of the interior. 

 The stem is round, armed with short curved spines ; the leaves 

 are oblong, pointed, distant, smooth, and glossy ; the root is a 

 tuber, with numerous divergent fibres, of two or three lines in 

 thickness, and several feet in length. 



Unfortunately, the traveller's attention is absorbed by a vast 

 variety of interesting scenes, while traversing the Guiana forest, 

 and he is prone to neglect special objects. I have no doubt, 

 however, that the Rio Negro Sarsa will one day be found grow- 

 ing abundantly within the limits of British Guiana; and who- 

 ever makes this discovery, will confer an inestimable benefit on 

 the public. Not only this, but the discovery of the true Ipeca- 

 cuhana plant, and the Cinchona tree, are amongst the important 

 discoveries which may be anticipated in Guiana, either upon the 

 plains, or on the range of its interior mountains. Such dis- 

 coveries are to be expected from the real botanist, who combines 

 a knowledge of the external forms of plants, with the more im- 

 portant science of their intrinsic properties, their application to 

 medicine, to the arts, and domestic economy.* I must here ob- 

 serve that, from my examination of samples of the genuine drug 

 from the Rio Negro, as it arrived at Angustura, with parts of 

 the stem adhering, it appeared that the species described by 

 Willdenow, as the Smilax syphylitica, caule acuhato tereti 

 aculeis axillaribus, is not that which is regarded as the true and 

 more active species, which has no axillary spines, and may there- 

 fore still be considered as a nondescript species. The natives, 

 (the Mandavaces of Cassiquari,) of whom I made inquiry, denied 



* The present would be a most favourable time for a botanist so inclined, to 

 set about an enterprise of this nature, as he would find, in the enlightened 

 Governor, Sir Benjamin D'Urban, the support of a zealous and unaffected patron 

 of science. 



