XXV 
NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS 
427 
both. Mr. Bentham believes my plant to be the 
old Mimosa pereg7Hna of Linnaeus {^Acacia peregrina, 
Willd.) ; and if both opinions be correct, then the 
species must be called Piptadenia peregrina (L.), 
Benth. ; and Acacia Niopo, Humb., will stand as a 
synonym. 
I first gathered specimens of the Parica (or 
Niopo) tree in 1850, near Santarem, at the junction 
of the Tapajoz and Amazon, where it had appar- 
ently been planted. In the following year I 
gathered it on the little river Jauauari — one of the 
lower tributaries of the Rio Negro — w^here it was 
certainly wild. But I did not see the snuff actually 
prepared from the seeds and in use until June 1854, 
at the cataracts of the Orinoco. A wandering horde 
of Guahibo Indians, from the river Meta, was en- 
camped on the savannas of Maypures, and on a 
visit to their camp I saw an old man grinding 
Niopo seeds, and purchased of him his apparatus 
for making and taking the snuff, which is now in 
the Museum of Vegetable Products at Kew. I 
proceed to describe both processes. 
The seeds being first roasted, are powdered on a 
wooden platter, nearly the shape of a watch-glass, 
but rather longer than broad (q^- inches by 8 inches). 
It is held on the knee by a broad thin handle, which 
is grasped in the left hand, while the fingers of the 
right hold a small spatula or pestle of the hard 
wood of the Palo de arco (Tecomae sp.) with which 
the seeds are crushed. 
The snuff is kept in a mull made of a bit of the 
leg-bone of the jaguar, closed at one end with pitch, 
and at the other end stopped with a cork of marima 
bark. It hangs around the neck, and from it are 
