442 
PREPARATION OF THE POISON. 
are ignorant, are found loaded with flowers and fruits. In 
travelling rapidly, even within the tropics, where the flower- 
ing of the ligneous plants is of such long duration, scarcely 
one-eighth of the trees can be seen furnishing the essential 
parts of fructification. The chances of being able to deter- 
mine, I do not say the family, but the genus and species, is 
consequently as one to eight ; and it may be conceived that 
this unfavourable 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 tho glutinous juice of the kiraca- 
guero-tree is poured into the venomous liquor well concen- 
tarted, and kept in a state of ebullition, it blackens, and 
coagulates into a mass of the consistence of tar, or of a 
thick syrup. This mass is the cware of commerce. When 
we hoar the Indians say that the hiracaguero is as necessary 
as the brjuco de muvaciire in the manufacture of the poison, 
we may he led into error by the supposition that the former 
also contains some deleterious principle, while it only serves 
(as the ali/arrobo, or any other gummy substance -would do) 
to give more body to the concentrated juice of the curare. 
The change of colour which the mixture undergoes is owing 
to the decomposition of a hydruret of carbon ; the hydrogen 
is burned, and the carbon is set free. The curare is sold in 
little calabashes ; but its preparation being in the bands of 
a few families, and the quantity of poison attached to each 
dart being extremely small, the best curare, that of Esme- 
ralda and Mandavaca, is sold at a veiy high price. This 
substance, when dried, resembles opium; but it strongly 
absorbs moisture when exposed to the air. Its taste is 
an agreeable bitter, and M. Bonpland and myself have often 
swallowed small portions of it. There is no danger in so 
doing, it it be certain that neither lips nor gums bleed. In 
experiments made by Mangili on the venom of the viper, 
one of his assistants swallowed all the poison that could 
be extracted from four large vipers of Italy, without being 
affected by it. The Indians consider the curare, taken 
internally, as an excellent stomachic. The same poison 
prepared by the Piraoas and Salives, though it has some 
celebrity, is. not so much esteemed as that of Esmeralda. 
The process of this preparation appears to be everywhere 
