CHAPTER IX.
DREAM-PLANTS.
The importance attached to dreams in all primitive and savage culture accounts for the significance ascribed to certain plants found by visitors to dreamland.

At the outset, it may be noticed that various drugs and narcotic potions have, from time immemorial, been employed for producing dreams and visions--a process still in force amongst uncivilised tribes.

Thus the Mundrucus of North Brazil, when desirous of gaining information on any special subject, would administer to their seers narcotic drinks, so that in their dreams they might be favoured with the knowledge required.

Certain of the Amazon tribes use narcotic plants for encouraging visions, and the Californian Indians, writes Mr.
Tylor,[1] "would give children narcotic potions, to gain from the ensuing visions information about their enemies;" whilst, he adds, "the Darien Indians used the seeds of the _Datura sanguinca_ to bring on in children prophetic delirium, in which they revealed hidden treasure." Similarly, the Delaware medicine-men used to drink decoctions of an intoxicating nature, "until their minds became wildered, so that they saw extraordinary visions."[2] The North American Indians also held intoxication by tobacco to be supernatural ecstasy.

It is curious to find a survival of this source of superstition in modern European folk-lore.