Richard Schultes: Blowguns are used in most of the Amazon, especially in the western Amazon with poisoned darts. The natives hunt with them. They make many different kinds of curare, arrow poisons, from many different plants. One plant is of very great importance in medicine. The others have different chemicals. Some have been used, some have no use, except as poisons. They blow these little darts from these six- or eight-foot tubes that they make. And, they are very accurate. They can shoot birds on the top of a 100-foot tree. And not only that, of course. Some of the monkeys are very good eating! They go along in bands, and if they used a shotgun and missed, all the monkeys would be a mile away. If they miss with a blowgun, it’s silent. If it hits its mark, it doesn’t kill immediately. It relaxes the muscles so much that the monkey loses his grip and falls down, then they club him and he’s dead. And, the other monkeys say, “What a damn fool, you can’t hold on!” And then they get a second monkey. If they used a noisy firearm, the monkeys would be away. So, from that point of view it’s wonderful. The thing that I found intriguing was how they run through the forest with these eight- or nine-foot, big things.