Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

444 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
prostrated the decayed Palm on Lake Vasiva.
Other dead Palms might fall when the full force of
the squall caught them, but the crash of their fall
would be drowned in the general roar ol the
tempest, and especially
in the continuous roll ot
the thunder. The truth seems to be that it is
nearly always during a storm such Palms do fall,
and that their prostration during a season of calm
is the rarest possible occurrence ; which accounts
for my having passed four years and a half in the
forest before I ever heard it, and for others having
lived the best part of their lives there either with-
out noticing it, or without caring to ascertain the
origin of the sound caused by it. It hardly needs
mention that perfectly vigorous Palm trees, and
a violent storm.
trees of all kinds, may fall during
Hurricanes that open out long lanes in the forest
are only too frequent towards the sources of the
Orinoco, but are exceedingly rare on and near the
Amazon.
Rarity of Curative Drugs ajnoug the Indigenes
From what was said above, it will have been
seen that, although the medicine-man doses himself
with powerful narcotics, no drug whatever is
administered to the patient ;
nor could I learn that
it was ever done by a "regular practitioner." The
Indians have a few household remedies, but by far
the greater portion of these have come into use
since the advent of the white man from Europe
and the negro from Africa. Von Martins remarks
nearly the same thing in the introduction to his
Systema Materiae Medicae vegetabilis Brasiliensis