448 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 



famished, for, although there was food, nobody 

 would cook it, and the guests sustained themselves 

 entirely on cauim and ipadii. At short intervals, 

 ipadii was handed round in a large calabash, with 

 a tablespoon, for each one to help himself, the 

 customary dose being a couple of spoonfuls. After 

 each dose they passed some minutes without 

 opening their mouths, adjusting the ipadii in the 

 recesses of their cheeks and inhaling its delightful 

 influences. I could scarcely resist laughing at 

 their swollen cheeks and grave looks during these 

 intervals of silence, which, however, had two or 

 three times the excellent effect of checking an 

 incipient quarrel. The ipadii is not sucked, but 

 allowed to find its way insensibly into the stomach 

 along with the saliva. I tried a spoonful twice, 

 but it had little effect on me, and assuredly did not 

 render me insensible to the calls of hunger, although 

 it did in some measure to those of sleep. It had 

 very little of either smell or taste, and in both 

 reminded me of weak tincture of henbane. I could 

 never make out that the habitual use of ipadii had 

 any ill results on the Rio Negro ; but in Peru its 

 excessive 'use is said to seriously injure the coats 

 of the stomach, an effect probably owing to the 

 lime taken along with it. 



The Use of Guarand as a Tonic 



Another powerful nervous tonic and subnarcotic 

 is cupana or guarana, which is prepared from the 

 seed of a twining plant of the family of Sapindacese. 

 The first definite information about it was obtained 

 by Humboldt and Bonplancl in the south of 



