328 The Aborigines of Brazil. 



it actually wild. Its use appears to have been long extended 

 over great portion of America. It is called in Aztek Qu- 

 auhayohuatlis, and by the Tupis Manduy-guaqu, large earth- 

 nut. The Spaniards of Buenos Ayres call the seeds Pinno- 

 nes del Paraguay. 



18. The Castor-oil plant, Ricinus Communis, L. This tree 

 is found growing to the height of our elder-bushes in great 

 abundance near Indian dwellings, but not in a wild state. 

 The Brazilians call it Mamona, the insular Caribs Lamaheu, 

 Chouloumanum and Alamaramarou. The practice of beating 

 oil out of the seeds is known universally among the Indians ; 

 but they entirely neglect the culture of the plant, as they 

 but seldom make use of its product. 



The history of the foregoing cultivated plants is not yet 

 sufficiently developed, even in a purely systematic point of 

 view. Thus it remains for future observation to determine, 

 whether many of them on closer examination may not be 

 found to consist of specifically different kinds, whether the 

 original stock of some one or other of them may not yet be 

 discovered, and whether we may not be able to assign more 

 distinctly defined limits for the diffusion of each species, by 

 historical reference to the people that used it first. 



Wild plants used in Medicine. 



From the group of mythical or pre-historical and culti- 

 vated plants, we must next distinguish another set, which 

 the present Indian inhabitants of Brazil have not re- 

 ceived down from a period of knowledge now gone by, 

 but which they have only in later times become acquainted 

 with and applied to useful purposes ; they have become 

 gradually known to them in the course of their long (perhaps 

 thousands of years long) wanderings, which are not however 

 enlightened by any rays of history. These plants are to this 

 day in a wild state : i. e., they are not cultivated by the 

 Indians for domestic or for medical use. Here we must 



