The Aborigines of Brazil. 323 



still open. The number of plants used by the Paje is very con- 

 siderable. I have myself seen many of them in their hands : of 

 others I have heard accounts given, and I am convinced that 

 several hundreds are in use. Many of them are no doubt of 

 little value, and the knowledge of others may not have been 

 communicated to Europeans, from the feeling of distrust 

 with which those new-comers are regarded by them. In my 

 " Systema Materiae Medicse Brasiliensis," 470 plants belong- 

 ing to 226 families are described ; but many of these have been 

 introduced by Europeans. If we now enquire into the sources 

 from which the Indians have derived the knowledge of so 

 many plants, it becomes plain that many must have been in- 

 troduced at a period antecedent to historical records. They 

 are the cultivated or mythical plants. 



Mythical Plants. 



Almost every tribe has a more or less complete myth or 

 story, about the way in which useful plants have been applied 

 to household or to medicinal purposes. In short, their plants 

 are like the most important ones of the Old World, various 

 kinds of grain, the olive, the vine, the bean and other kinds 

 of vegetables : as we do not know their original country, 

 so are we ignorant of that of the analogous ones of the New 

 World. No sure tradition tells how the Indians first discovered 

 them, or when or how they first used them. They are never 

 found wild, except where here and there they have run so, and 

 are every where cultivated with much care. We must there- 

 fore assume regarding these plants, that like the European 

 cultivated ones, they are derived from paradise, or (if this ex- 

 pression will be objected to by some) that the Aborigines 

 of America have derived them, and gradually extended their 

 cultivation, from districts of America where the inhabitants 

 were once in possession of a higher degree of knowledge and of 

 cultivation, of which they have left traces behind them in their 

 colossal buildings. As regards the mythical plants of Brazil, 



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