WCP6711

[1]

July 27th 1917

[162]

Ashley Chambers,

Boscombe

Hants¹

Acker

31.7.[19]17 ²

³

Dear Sir,

I am informed by Sir Daniel Morris⁴ that you would like to have, for the Kew Museum, some specimens of Curare poison⁵ collected by my father in the Amazon Valley.

I have much pleasure in sending them to you. The little pot is marked in my father's handwriting "Urari poison. Upper Amazon". The stick was originally wrapped up in dried leaves of which only a fragment now remains, & upon this wrapping if I remember rightly, was a similar inscription, but I cannot be sure of this.

On p 504 (item 19) of "Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro" (1st Ed[ition]) are mentioned "Small pots and calabasehes, with curarí or ururí poison" as being made by the Uampés Indians⁶.

[2] I am sending the poison in a separate registered package.

Yours very truly,

W.G. Wallace⁷

Rec[eived] 20.VII.17

Ack 31.VII.17

35.1917 W.W.

Sir David Prain⁸ C.M.G. F.R.S. etc

Kew