H 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
the strychnine does not appear to be used alone, but to be mixed with the other 
poison when larger game is aimed at. I was told, both by the Scman 1 them¬ 
selves and by Malays, that the domestic fowl and the domestic cat are both 
immune to upas or ipob poison, and this is certainly true in the case of the 
fowl. To prove it I took a supply of freshly made darts and two healthy hens, 
and pricked the latter in different parts of the body until, in one case, the poison 
from the dart was almost completely dissolved in the blood. There was no 
result other than would have been caused by an ordinary prick. Later in the 
same day I caught a frog, Rbacopborus kumnystax , and inserted one of the same 
lot of darts beneath the loose skin of its back, in such a way that only half the 
the poison was covered and only a very small portion of it dissolved. In two 
minutes, by a watch, the frog had become so lethargic that it refused to move 
when touched. Its breathing became rapidly shorter, its mouth opened, and 
the pupils of its eyes turned upwards. It was dead in less than seven minutes. 
About three minutes before death it leapt into the air, but landed on its back. 
It was quite silent throughout, though this species of frog screams loudly when 
attacked by a snake. 
The poisons are produced by boiling down the substances extracted from 
the two plants, either together or separately, until they have attained a dark 
colour and a treacly consistency. They are then spread out with thin strips 
of bamboo or wood upon spatula-shaped palettes, upon which the points of 
the darts are rolled until a conical mass of the poison, about a quarter of an 
inch long, has adhered to them. 
Not infrequently the Semin thrust their poison darts loosely into the cloth 
round the waist, and though this practice seems very dangerous, I was told that 
accidents arising from it were unknown. When quivers are used they are of a 
very characteristic type (Plate XIII, fig. i, B). While the other tribes investi¬ 
gated all use a large bamboo in making the receptacles for their darts, the Semin 
prefer a slender species, usually not more than an inch-and-a-half in diameter. 
From the stem of this they cut off a piece about fifteen inches long. No cover 
is made, but the bamboo is stoppered with bunches of leaves or fibre, and is 
carried upside down when in the jungle, as wet destroys the poison on the 
darts. The ornamentation of these quivers is characterized by a differentiation 
of colour produced by cutting away the rind of the bamboo and rubbing some 
kind of oil into the comparatively absorbent surface thus produced. This is 
done either in transverse bands or in segments of a circle. Otherwise the 
patterns closely resemble those on the Sakai combs. The quivers of the Sem&n 
are frequently polished with oil, so that they have a shiny surface and soon 
i. The reason. thty give it that fowl# ‘eat earth.' 
