521 



cally. I have several times mentioned that kind 

 of fatality, which withholds the most interesting 

 plants from the examination of travellers, while 

 thousands of others, of the chemical properties 

 of which we are ignorant, are found loaded with 

 flowers and fruits. In travelling rapidly, even 

 within the tropics, where the flowering of the 

 ligneous plants is of such long duration, scarcely 

 an eighth of the trees can be seen furnishing the 

 essential parts of fructification. The chances of 

 being able to determine, I do not say the family, 

 but the genus and species, is consequently as 1 

 to 8 ; ^nd it may be conceived, that this unfa- 

 vourable chance is felt most powerfully, when it 

 deprives us of the intimate knowledge of objects, 

 which afford a higher interest than that of 

 descriptive botany. 



At the instant when the glutinous juice of the 

 kiracaguero tree is poured into the venomous 

 liquor well concentrated, and kept in a state of 

 ebullition, it blackens, and coagulates into a 

 mass of the consistence of tar, or of a thick 

 sirup. This mass is the curare of commerce. 

 When we hear the Indians say, that the kiraca- 

 guero is as necessary as the bejuco de mavacure 

 to the fabrication of the poison, we may be led 

 into error, supposing, that the former also 

 contains some deleterious principle, while it 

 only serves (as the algarobbo, or any other 

 gummy substance would do), to give more body 



