100 
Rev. Mr Adamson on the Extent of our 
round me. I awakened the Botocudo ; he assured me he was ex- 
ceedingly well, and the night passed without any accident. 
As soon as I had got out of the deserts, in which I then was, 
and entered the province of the Missions, I asked a great many 
people about the honey of the Lecheguanas. All, whether Por- 
tuguese, Guaranis, or Spaniards, agreed in saying, that two spe- 
cies of Lecheguana were distinguished in the country ; the one 
which affords a white honey (Lechegnayio de mel branco ), and 
the other which produces a reddish honey, ( Lecheguana de mel 
vermelho ). They added, that the honey of the former species 
never did harm ; that that of the other, the only kind which I have 
seen, did not always do harm, but that when it did prove trouble- 
some, it occasioned a sort of drunkenness or delirium, which were 
removed only by vomiting, and which sometimes w r ent so far as 
to occasion death. 
I was informed that the plant was perfectly well known from 
which the Lecheguana wasp frequently extracts a poisonous 
honey ; but it was not shewn to me, and I was unfortunately 
left to form conjectures regarding it * 
Art. XVI. Sketches of the extent of our information respecting 
Rail-roads. By the Rev. James Adamson. 
We must look upon the employment of iron surfaces upon 
roads, as only the natural consequence of the continual attempts 
to improve them, and as a thing likely to have been often talk- 
ed of, and predicted, long ^before the advancement of art per- 
mitted the adoption of a material so expensive. To derive the 
greatest benefit from the methods of conveyance in use at pre- 
sent, would require the presence, on our roads, of two kinds of 
surface, of which neither can be found in perfection in any in- 
termixture of the two ; yet, in the formation of a public road, 
there is an attempt to combine the two incompatible qualities of 
presenting a hard and smooth surface to the wheels, and a soft 
and rough one to the feet of the horse. It is an obvious im- 
provement to allot separate spaces to the differing surfaces. The 
* In the next number of this Journal, we shall give M. St Hilaire’s account of 
the various species of poisonous plants, which grow In the southern parts of Brazil. — • 
Ed, 
