botanist and intrepid explorer science is indebted, to no small extent, for the present state of our knowledge of the chinchona genus. The C. Calisaya species has been divided by Dr. Weddell into two varieties, namely, a vera and B Josephiana. The former, when growing under favourable circumstances, is a tall tree, often larger round than twice a man's girth, with its leafy head rising above all the other trees of the forest. The leaves are oblong or lanceolate-obovate, pitted in the axils of the veins, with a shining green surface, and reddish veins. The flowers, which hang in large panicles, are a rosy-white colour, with lacinia rose-colour, and bordered by marginal white hairs. The capsule is smooth, and about twice as long as broad. This tree grows on declivities, and steep rugged places of the mountains, from 4900 to 5900 feet above the sea, in the forests of Enquisivi, Capaulican, Apollobamba, and Larecaja in Bolivia, and of Caravaya in Peru. The trunk may be known by the periderm of the bark, sometimes of a greyish-white, sometimes brown or blackish, being always marked by longitudinal ridges or cracks, a characteristic remarked of no other tree of these forests, excepting one or two of the same family. The taste is strongly bitter, which is apparent directly the tip of the tongue touches it, and, when the exterior receives a cut, a yellow gummy resinous matter exudes from it. The bark comes off with great ease, like peeling a mushroom, while, in the inferior kinds, and above all in the false chinchonas, it strips transversely, and with much greater difficulty. A good tree yields 150 to 175 pounds of dried bark. The other variety of C. Calisaya, called ychu cascarilla, or cascarilla del pajonal, by the natives, was named Josephiana by Dr. Weddell after the unfortunate French botanist Joseph de Jussieu. It is a shrub, not attaining a greater height than six and a half to ten feet, and growing on open grassy slopes, at much higher elevations than the tree Calisaya. There is another tree variety with a somewhat darker leaf, which Dr. Weddell classed as a distinct species, and called C. Boliviana in 1849, but which he now considers to be a mere variety of C. Calisaya. The other good kinds in the forests of Bolivia and Caravaya are C. micrantha, and two varieties of C. ovata. Dr. Weddell brought seeds of C. Calisaya to Paris, which were raised in the Jardin des Plantes in 1848, and others in the garden of the Horticultural Society in London, where one of the plants flowered.3 Many of these plants were given away, and some of them were sent by the Dutch Government to Java. Plants of C. Calisaya are now flourishing in India. The yield of quinine for the best kinds of calisaya bark is 3·8 per cent., that for the Josephiana variety 3.29.4 Arica and Islay are the ports for the shipment of calisaya bark; and in 1859 the quantity and value exported were: From Arica 1926 quintals, worth £17,334 .. CHAPTER III. Rapid destruction of chinchona-trees in South America- Importance of their introduction into other countries- M. Hasskarl's mission - Chinchona plantations in Java. THE collection of bark in the South American forests was conducted from the first with reckless extravagance; no attempt worthy the name has ever been made either with a view to the conservancy or cultivation of the chinchona-trees; and both the complete abandonment of the forests to the mercy of every speculator, as in Peru, Ecuador, and New Granada, and the barbarous meddling legislation of Bolivia, have led to equally destructive results. The bark-collector enters the forest and destroys the first clump of chinchonatrees he finds, without a thought of any measure to preserve the continuance of a supply of bark. Thus, in Apollobamba, where the trees once grew thickly round the village, no fullgrown one is now to be found within eight or ten days' journey;1 and so utterly improvident are the collectors that, in the forests of Cochabamba, they bark the tree without felling, and thus ensure its death; or, if they cut it down, they actually neglect to take off the bark on the side touching the ground, to save themselves the trouble of turning the trunk over.2 A century ago Condamine3 raised a warning voice against the destruction that was going on in the forests of Loxa. Ulloa advised the Government to check it by legislation; soon afterwards Humboldt reported that 25,000 chinchona Weddell, Histoire Naturelle des Quinquinas. Weddell, Voyage dans le Nord de¦ Bolivie. 3 Mém. de l'Acad. Roy. des Sciences, 1738, p. 226. 4 Noticias Secretus, p. 572. СНАР. ІІІ. NECESSARY PRECAUTION IN FELLING. 45 trees were destroyed every year, and Ruiz protested against the custom of barking the trees, and leaving them to be destroyed by rot. But nothing was ever done in the way of conservancy, either by the Government, or by private speculators whose subsistence depended on a continued supply of bark. Dr. Weddell, alluding to this recklessness as regards C. Calisaya, observes that "the forests of Bolivia, rich as they are, cannot long resist the continued attacks to which they have been recently exposed. He who, in Europe, sees these enormous and ever-increasing masses of bark arrive, may perhaps believe that they will continue to do so; but he who sees the chinchona-trees in their native forests, and knows the real truth, is obliged to think otherwise." There is, however, no danger of the actual extirpation of the trees unless the plan is adopted of leaving them standing, and stripped of their bark, as in the Loxa forests. Poeppig says that, in these cases, the trees in the tropical forests are attacked by rot with extraordinary rapidity; hosts of insects penetrate the stem to complete the work of destruction, and the healthy root becomes infected. Thus the valuable species called C. Uritusinga has really been almost exterminated. But where the trees are felled it is only necessary to observe the precaution of hewing the stem as near as possible to the root, in order to be sure of its after-growth. Under these circumstances, after six years the young trees are ready to be felled again in the milder regions, and after twenty years in cold and exposed localities. From the base of the stems, when not barked, a number of shoots spring out between bark and wood; and Dr. Karsten says that, though an interval of rest of twelve or fifteen years must be given to the forests where the chinchona-trees have thus been felled, this only promotes further investigation in the endless 5 MS. quoted by Howard. • Poeppig. untrodden forests, while, in the mean time, the younger generation is growing up in those which have already been exhausted." The danger, therefore, is not in the actual annihilation of the chinchona-trees in South America, but lest, with the increasing demand, there should be long intervals of time during which the supply would cease, owing to the forests being exhausted, and requiring periods of rest. In many districts this is already the case. The bark which comes from Loxa is in the minutest quills, and in the forests of Caravaya, after an interval of rest of several years, the rootshoots had scarcely grown to a sufficient size to yield anything but quill bark. Then again the supplies of bark from South America are not nearly sufficient to meet the demand, and the price is kept so high as to place this inestimable remedy beyond the means of millions of natives of fevervisited regions. For these reasons the incalculable importance of introducing the chinchona-plant into other countries adapted for its growth, and thus escaping from entire dependence on the South American forests, has long occupied the attention of scientific men in Europe. In 1839 Dr. Royle, in his Illustrations of Himalayan Botany," recommended the introduction of the chinchonaplants into India, pointing out the Neilgherry and Silhet hills as suitable sites for the experiment, and Lord William Bentinck took some interest in the project. M. Fée had previously recommended the introduction of these plants into the French colonies; and in 1849 both Dr. Weddell' and M. Delondre strongly urged the adoption of this measure. 7 Karsten. 8 I. p. 245. Probably the idea was first conceived much earlier by Dr. Ainslie, who, half a century ago, remarked that it was matter of regret that "it had never been attempted to rear those articles of the Materia Medica in India, for which the world is now solely indebted to America."Ainslie's Materia Medica, p. 66 (note). 9 Cours d'Hist. Nat. Pharm. ii. p. 252. p. 13. 1 Histoire Naturelle des Quinquinas, 2 Quinologie, par M. A. Delondre, p. 15. |