202 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ETH. ANN. 38 
207. Puddling is practiced by the Wapishana. They will drag a 
savanna tree (e. g., the “sandpaper” or curatella) backward and 
forward across a pool, and by so muddying the water force the fish to 
the surface (JO). 
208. Many of the vegetable poisons for catching fish—a practice 
which extended even out into the islands (RO, 507) can not, unfor- 
tunately, now be identified, the particular names handed down to us 
being more or less colloquial. But, whatever the poison, it must be re- 
membered that some fish may remain immune from a kind which 
affects others (SR, 1, 408; 11, 153). Schomburgk has pointed out that 
these poisons not only affect the respiratory but also the nervous sys- 
tem, in that the fish’s pupils are generally widely dilated (SR, 1, 408). 
Kappler drew attention to the fact that crabs and crayfish are affected 
by the Lonchocarpus poison (AK, 190). Timbo is the lingua geral 
and barbasco the Spanish term for vegetable poisons in general. On 
the upper Rio Negro these would include species of Paullinia and 
Serjania (KG, n, 49). 
209. Among those plants that I have been unable to scientifically 
identify are the cuna and bascara of the Orinoco, the liane of the 
Corentyn, and the sinapou of Cayenne. Cuna, writes Gumilla. 
grows after the style of lucerne (alfalfa) and produces a root simi- 
lar to rape (nabos), except in color and taste. These roots, pounded 
and washed in water, have so strong an odor as to intoxicate and 
stupefy the fish, which can then be seized by hand. Others which 
manage to escape upstream are knocked over with sticks by a row 
of Indians waiting for the purpose; while those that rush down- 
stream are intercepted by a fence placed in suitable position, and if 
they try to jump it they fall onto a large frame fixed on top. An- 
other method of using it is to make a dough of pounded, cooked 
maize, and another of similar material but mixed with some of the 
root. Proceeding to a neighboring stream, the Indians will scatter 
in it some of the harmless mixture and so attract a number of me- 
dium-sized fish. They will then throw in the poisoned mass, while 
at the same time the children, each with its basket, enter the water 
some 4 paces lower down. The fish are stupefied, and so carried 
downstream and picked up at leisure (G, 1, 282). Bascara is an- 
other poison root. It is of the same color and make as a vine stem, 
and used in the same manner as the cuna—i. e., pounded and washed 
in water (G, 1, 282). The nebi (“bush rope”), called liane, has the 
same property of stupefying fish [as the Lonchocarpus], but its effect 
is not nearly so strong (StC, 1, 318-319). Chips from the trunk 
of the moraballi (?) are said to be used by Arawak on the Esse- 
quibo coast, and the roots of the sinapou have been reported from 
Cayenne (PBA, 157-158; Cr, 45). Wild agave (7) seeds have been 
mentioned to me as a fish poison on the Demerara River. 
