to be an effectual substitute for sealing-wax, is apparently calculated for many uses. A kind of ozier or willow, which grows in this territory, is deemed by the Indians a specific in complaints of the bowels, and is named by them calenture, because, in employing its decoction in cases of the most violent rheumatic affections, the patient is subjected for three or four hours to a violent fever, which, terminating in a copious perspiration, leaves him free from every ailment. The few trials of this remedy which have been made, have been extremely successful against siphylis; and if the practical inquiries that have been recently instituted should correspond with them, cures may be effected by the means of one of the most surprizing simples for which medicine is indebted to the American continent. The production of a worm, which the Indians name sustillo, and by which a paper, very similar to that made in China, is fabricated, has been hitherto unknown to all the naturalists.[1] Lastly, Bezares discovered that which
- ↑ Even the great Reaumur included, there is not one of them who makes mention, either of this caterpillar, or of its production. Father Calancha alone, in his Augustinian History of Peru (lib. i. p. 66), gives an account of it, and observes, that it is peculiar to the valley of Pampateco, now, Pampantico, in the vicinity of the Panamas, now Panataguas, at a small distance from Huanuco, and ten days’ journey from Lima, where the Jesuits built the tovyn of Ascension. This is properly the site discovered by Bezares. Calancha adds, that he had in his possession a leaf of this paper, inscribed by father Alonso Gomez, and addressed to father Lucas Salazar, who was assured by his correspondent, that it was cut from a piece a yard and a quarter in length, and that there were other pieces which measured a yard and three-quarters, &c. Next follow the details relative to the mode the worm pursues in weaving the paper. The loss of the towns above referred to, and the scarcity of Calancha's work, buried in oblivion the discovery and remembrance of this pheno-
