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NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS 451
T^ inch in diameter, black, polished, nearly half-immersed in a
cupuliform white aril, with undulato-truncate mouth, which is
seated on an obconical torus.
Humboldt's description of his Paullinia Cupana
(loc. cit,}
tallies with the above as to number, form,
and cutting of leaflets, and the only difference is
that the fruits are called "ovate," having probably
been described from immature dried specimens, in
which the true form of the fruit is apt to be
disguised by the shrinking of the soft, half- formed
seed and of its enclosing pericarp. I have, besides,
seen with my own eyes that the Guarana of Brazil
and the Cupana of Venezuela are one and the same
plant, which is cultivated in the way up
villages
the Rio Negro, and
and farms
is known
all
as
Guarana in the lower, but as Cupana in the
upper part of that river ; while
about the line of
demarcation between Brazil and Venezuela it is
called indifferently by both names. The very same
plant is cultivated also at Javita, and in the villages
of the Atabapo and Orinoco, as far north as to the
cataracts of the latter. I have nowhere seen it wild.
I gathered the following information about
Guarana at Santarem, on the Amazon, and at the
mouth of the river Uaupes. The fruit is gathered
when fully ripe, and the seeds are picked out of
the pericarp and aril, which dye the hands of the
operators a permanent yellow. The seeds are then
roasted, pounded, and made up into sticks, much
in the same way as chocolate, which they rather
resemble in colour. In 1850, a stick of guarana
used to weigh from one to two pounds, and was
sold at about 2s. 4cl. the pound at Santarem ; but
at Cuyaba, the centre of the gold and diamond