444 
ETEECTS OE THE POISOIT. 
mavacure is a mortal poison only when it is concentrated bl 
fire ; and ebullition deprives the juice of the root of Jatropba 
manihot (the manioc) of all its baneful qualities. In rub- 
bing a long time between my fingers the liana which yields 
the potent poison of La Peca, when the weather was exces- 
sively hot, my hands were benumbed; and a person who 
was employed with me felt the same effects from this rapid 
absorption by the uninjured integuments. 
1 shall not here enter into any detail on the physiological 
properties of those poisons of the New "World which kill 
with the same promptitude as the strychneae of Asia,* but 
without producing vomiting when they are received into the 
stomach, and without denoting tbe approach of death by 
the violent excitement of the spinal marrow. Scarcely a 
fowl is eaten on the banks of the Orinoco which has not 
been killed with a poisoned arrow; and the missionaries 
allege that the flesh of animals is never so good as when 
this method is employed. Pather Zea, who accompanied 
us, though ill of a tertian fever, every morning had the live 
fowls allotted for our food brought to his hammock together 
with an arrow, and he killed them himself ; for he would 
not confide this operation, to which he attached great 
importance, to any other person. Large birds, a guan 
(pava de monte) for instance, or a curassao (alector), when 
wounded in the thigh, die in two or three minutes; but 
it is often ten or twelve minutes before life is extinct in a 
pig or a peccary. M. Bonpland found that the same poison, 
bought in different villages, varied much. We had pro- 
cured at the river Amazon some real Ticuna poison which 
was less potent than any of the varieties of the curare of the 
Orinoco. Travellers, on arriving in the missions, frequently 
testily their apprehension on learning that the fowls, mon- 
keys, guanas, and even the fish which they eat, have been 
killed with poisoned arrows. But these fears are ground- 
less. Majendie has proved by his ingenious experiments 
on transfusion, that the blood of animals on which the bitter 
strychnos of India has produced a deleterious effect, has no 
fatal action on other animals. A dog received a consider- 
able quantity of poisoned blood into his veins without any 
trace of irritation being perceived in the spinal marrow. 
* The mix vrmica, the upas tieute, and the bean of St. Ignatius 
(Strychnos Tgnntin.) 
