ON THE CINCHONA FORESTS OF SOUTH AMERICA. BY A. VON HUMBOLDT. SECTION I. The present Essay is written with a view to examine the Cinchona tree as an object of physical or botanical geography. Amongst the numerous writers mentioning the Cinchona, there are none but La Condamine, Ruiz, Pavon, and Zea, who themselves have observed this beneficial tree upon the South American continent. Only the first of these gives a physical description of this plant; the others, as well as Jacquin and Swartz, who saw the Cinchonæ in the West-India Islands, and Vahl and Lambert, who occupied themselves with dried specimens, have merely treated on the natural history and the botanical diagnosis. During my stay of four years in South America, I had occasion to reside a long time in countries where the Cinchona trees are indigenous. M. Bonpland and myself have observed them north and south of the equator, in the kingdom of New Granada, betwixt Honda and Santa Fe de Bogota, in the province of Popayan, in the corregiment of Loxa, on the Amazon river, in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros; and in the northerly part of Peru. During our abode in the house of Don Jose Celestino Mutis, in Santa Fe, the botanical treasures of that great natural philosopher were opened to us. In Spain, also, we were enabled to collect, from the editor of the Flora Peruviana, in Guayaquil, (the harbour of Quito on the coast of the South Sea) from M. Tafalla, a pupil of Ruiz, in the little town of Loxa, from Don Vincente Olmedo, royal inspector of the Cinchona forests, many interesting accounts respecting objects which, but for the obliging communications from those friends, would have remained unknown to us. Respecting the very violent controversy on the question, whether the orange-coloured Cinchona bark of New Granada, or the Peruvian Cinchona nitida, described by Ruiz and Pavon, be identical with the genuine Cinchona of Uritusinga, famed already since 1638, he only can decide who has himself explored the regions producing these three plants. But of the contending parties, neither Mutis, Zea, nor Ruiz and Pavon, have ever set their feet in the corregiment of Loxa. Thence it is, that each party has, with equal want of foundation, asserted that the most efficacious Cinchona bark of their respective districts was the genuine one from Uristusinga. In the second fasciculus of our Æquinoctial Plants we have shown, that this latter, the Cascarilla fina de Loxa, is entirely different from Cinchona lancifolia of Mutis, and from all those Peruvian Cinchona barks described in Ruiz’s Quinologia, in the Flora Peruviana, and in the recent Supplement to the Quinologia. Averse as we are from entering into competition with the abovenamed excellent botanists, yet the accidental advantage has fallen to our lot, of having ourselves seen the Cinchona forests near Santa Fe, as also those of Loxa. In fact, for the last sixty years, since the time of Joseph de Jussieu, whose observations were moreover never published, no travelling naturalist has preceded us in visiting the beautiful mountain plains of Loxa. Favoured by these circumstances, I think myself enabled to speak with some confidence on so difficult a subject, which, by a variety of controversies, has become more and more perplexed. Plantes Æquinoctiales, par Messrs. Bonpland et Humboldt, Troisieme livraison, p. 39. It would be superfluous to repeat the fictions concerning the history of the discovery of the medicinal powers of the Cinchona bark. Some say a patient had drank out of a lake the waters of which had acquired a bitter taste from Cinchona trunks which had lain in them; others, that a lion had cured himself of the ague by chewing Cinchona bark, and had thus directed the attention of the Indians to this tree. Lambert, in his Monograph of Cinchona, has collected all these opinions. That animals have taught men, is a very common form of the traditions of nations. The valuable antidote Vijuco del guaco, a plant described by Mutis, which is related to the Mikania, and has been erroneously confounded with the Ayapana of Brazil, is also said to have attracted the notice of the Indians (as is affirmed of the Falco serpentarius) by the Falco guaco of New Granada fighting with serpents. However, that the great American lion without mane, Felis concolor, should be subject to the ague, is just as bold an hypothesis as the assertion of the inhabitants of the pestilential valley Gualla Bamba, that even the vultures (Vultur aura) in their neighbourhood were subject to that disorder. Indeed, in the regions of the Cinchona forests there is not even a Felis concolor so fond of warmth to be found; but at the most the cat Puma, not yet properly described, (La Condamine’s Petit lion du volcan de Pinchincha, which I should be inclined to call Felis andicola,) and which we have met with in heights of 2,500 toises. A Description of the Genus Cinchona, 1792, p. 39. Near to the town of Quito. The story, so often copied, respecting the Countess Chinchon, vice-queen of Peru, is probably still more doubtful than it is generally supposed to be. There certainly was a Count Chinchon, Don Geronimo Fernandez de Cabrera Bobadella y Mendoza, who was Viceroy in Lima from 1629 to 1639. It is very probable that his wife, after her return to Spain in 1640, was the first who introduced the Cinchona bark into Europe. The name of Pulvis Comitissæ appears even more ancient than that of Pulvis Jesuiticus or Pulvis Patrum. But I do not believe (and M. Olmedo in Loxa is of the same opinion with me) that the corregidor of Loxa, Don Juan Lopez de Cannizares, who is said to have cured the Countess of the ague, received this remedy from the Indians. In Loxa there is no tradition whatever of this kind; nor is it probable that the discovery of the medicinal power of the Cinchona belongs to the primitive nations of America, if it is considered that these nations (like the Hindoos) adhere with unalterable pertinacity to their customs, to their food, and to their nostrums, and that, notwithstanding all this, the use of the Cinchona bark is entirely unknown to them in Loxa, Guancabamba, and far around. In the deep and hot valleys of the mountains of Catamago, Rio Calvas, and Macara, agues are extremely common. But the natives there, as well as in Loxa, of whatever cast, would die rather than have recourse to Cinchona bark, which, together with opiates, they place in the class of poisons exciting mortification. The Indians cure themselves by lemonades, by the oleaginous aromatic peel of the small green wild lemon, by infusions of Scoparia dulcis, and by strong coffee. In Malacatis only, where many bark-peelers live, they begin to put confidence in the Cinchona bark. In Loxa there is no document to be found which can elucidate the history of the discovery of the Cinchona: an old tradition, however, is current there, that the Jesuits at the felling of the wood had distinguished, according to the custom of the country, the different kinds of trees by chewing their barks, and that on such occasions they had taken notice of the considerable bitterness of the Cinchona. There being always medical practitioners among the Missionaries, it is said they had tried an infusion of the Cinchona in the tertian ague, a complaint which is very common in that part of the country. This tradition is less improbable than the assertion of European authors, and among them the late writers Ruiz and Pavon, who ascribe the discovery to the Indians. The medicinal powers of the Cinchona was likewise entirely unknown to the inhabitants of the kingdom of New Granada. Flora Peruviana, tom. ii. p. 2. Among the Indians on the Orinoco, particularly in Atures and Maypura, we have found an excellent febrifuge, the frutta de Burro, the fruit of a new species of Uvaria, which we have described by the name of Uvaria febrifuga. A century elapsed before any botanical description was obtained of the tree whose pulverized bark yielded the Jesuit’s Powder. The astronomer La Condamine, who ranged with indescribable vivacity through all departments of human knowledge, and by whom there are several neat botanical drawings in the collection of Jussieu in Paris, was the first man of science who examined and described the Cinchona tree. In the year 1737 he travelled through Loxa to Lima, and his description of the Cinchona appeared in 1738 in the Mem. de l’Academie. Afterwards, in the year 1739, Joseph de Jussieu explored the country in the vicinity of Loxa. There, and in the neighbourhood of Zaruma, he gathered a great number of specimens, which are still to be found in Jussieu’s collection at Paris, and which we have compared with our own, collected sixty years later on the same spot. Amongst these was the Cinchona pubescens, which Vahl has described as new, but which, as we shall subsequently prove, is the first Cinchona officinalis of Linné’s Systema Naturæ (12th edition). In the year 1743 La Condamine was a second time in Loxa, from whence he travelled, as we did in the year 1802, to Tomepinda and the Amazon river. At that time the first and (what is singular enough) the last attempt was made to bring young Cinchona trees alive to Europe. After the astronomer had carefully nursed them for eight months during a passage of 1200 leagues, they were swallowed up by a wave, which washed over the boat, near Cape Orange, north of Para. Voyage à l’Equateur, p. 31, 75, 186, and 203. Botanists for a long time were acquainted with only one species of Cinchona, which Linnæus called officinalis, and in the description of which, he united, without knowing it, our C. Condaminea and C. cordifolia Mutis; for the specimen sent him from Santa Fe was yellow Cinchona, and totally different from that drawn, though imperfectly, by La Condamine. At last Jacquin’s voyage made us acquainted with another species, viz. the C. caribæa. The West India Islands, the South Seas, even the East Indies, offered from time to time more species of Cinchona to the traveller, but the most efficacious and the most remarkable ones of the continent of South America remained longest unnoticed. From 1638 to 1776 no other Cinchona bark was met with in commerce, except that of the corregiment of Loxa and its neighbourhood. La Condamine makes mention of the bark from Riobamba and Cuenca in the province of Quito, as also of that from Ayavanca and Jaen de Bracamoros. But the bark from the interior of Peru (around Huanuca, and in the province La Paz) or even the bark from the kingdom of New Granada was entirely unknown to him. They did not suppose it possible for Cinchona trees to exist north of the Equator, and consequently in our hemisphere, till a fortunate accident led a man, who had a long time lived in Loxa, in some department connected with the peeling of barks, on his return to Spain, across Popayan to Santa Fe de Bogota. This observing traveller was the upper Mint Director (Superintendente general de moneda de Santa Fe) Don Miguel de Santistevan, who, without any botanical knowledge, discovered physiognomically, that is to say, by mere habitus, the Cinchona trees from Loxa up to 2 [Formel] ° N. lat. In a memorial concerning the royal administration of the whole trade of Cinchona bark (Estanco de Cascarilla) which in 1753 he addressed to the viceroy Marquis de Villar, he expressly says that he had found Cinchona trees not only betwixt Loxa and Quito, for instance, easterly from Cuenca near the villages Paute and Gualasco, westerly from Riobamba on the declivity of the Chimborazo near Angas, and on the Cuesta de S. Antonio, but also betwixt Quito and Santa Fe in all situations, where the ground is of an equal height with Loxa, consequently 800 toises above the level of the sea. The estimate of the height according to modern measurements, and even according to the earlier ones of La Condamine, is certainly too low by at least 250 toises; but the acute observation, respecting the mean height in which the Cinchona trees are always met with on the mountainous declivity, is the more striking, since even learned philosophers at that time paid attention to the geography of plants, or to the height of their situation. It is also to be observed, that although M. Santistevan, according to the manuscript accounts which I procured of him, speaks generally of Cinchona trees betwixt Quito and Santa Fe, yet we can perceive from his enumeration of particular places, that he discovered this precious produce only in the valley of Rio Tuanamba north of Pasto, in the forests of Beruccos, and in the vicinity of Popayan, near Guanacas, the dangerous pass of the Andes, betwixt the village of this name and the Sitia de los Corrales. Voyage de la Rivière de l’Amazone, p. 25. Such was the state of the discovery of Cinchona north of the equator until the year 1772. All the Cinchona bark of commerce was from Loxa, Gauancabamba, and Jaen, perhaps even from Riobamba and Cuenza. The whole was shipped at the ports of the Pacific. No advantage was derived from the important discovery in the provinces of Pasto and Popayan. In the year 1772 Don Jose Celestino Mutis discovered the Cinchona about Santa Fe, and since this epoch Europe received Cinchona bark which did not double Cape Horn, and which came by way of Carthagena de Indias to Cadiz. M. Mutis had resided already twelve years in the kingdom of New Granada. He had travelled twice through the forests between Guaduas and Santa Fe, where the Cinchona tree is surrounded by the beautiful Granada oaks. If we consider the diversity of plants which engage the attention of the botanist in these countries; if we reflect that in the tropics the height of the trunks withdraws from our eyes both leaves and blossoms; we shall be the less surprised that M. Mutis discovered the Cinchona only in 1772, when he found it in blossom. This excellent explorer of nature, who is a native of Cadiz, studied three years in Madrid, and was induced by a love of botany to accompany the viceroy Don Pedro Misia de la Cerda, as his physician, to Santa Fe. He lived a long time in the districts of Pampelona and de la Montuosa, a name which, to the greatest dissatisfaction of M. Mutis, Linnæus has construed into Mexico; so that this Swedish botanist has quoted all the New Granada specimens which he received from la Montuosa, as Mexican ones. This error is the more singular, since Linnæus, who corresponded with Mutis always by way of Carthagena de Indias, must have perceived that he never resided in Mexico. The absence of M. Mutis in the mines north of Santa Fe had kept him far from the Cinchona forests of Mave, Gascas, and the Aseradero. Mutis, in a report to the viceroy Don Manuel Antonio Florez, alleges as a ground of the later discovery of the Cinchona, that up to 1772 he had directed all his botanical excursions out of the limits of the first 5 degrees of N. lat., which he held to be the exclusive country of the Cinchona in the northern hemisphere. This great naturalist did not at that time suspect, that soon afterwards the Cinchona tree would be found to exist even at the mouth of the Rio Opon, and as far as Santa Martha, consequently in the 10th degree of N. lat. For instance, Mannettia reclinata. Mutis had procured the first dried specimens of the yellow Cinchona of Loxa (C. cordifolia) from M. Santistevan, director of the Mint. According to these, the genus Cinchona was established in such manner as he communicated it to Linnæus. In the year 1772, when M. Mutis, in company with his friend Don Pedro Ugarte, rode through the forest of Tena, not far from the mountainous declivity of Santa Fe, he discovered Cinchona trees. A year afterwards he also found them betwixt Honda and Guaduas; and presented to the viceroy Don Manuel de Guirior, who had just embarked on the Magdalen river, a flowering branch of Cinchona, as a newly-discovered valuable product of that country, which nature had also enriched with aromatic Nutmegs (Myristica Otoba), with an excellent Cinnamon tree (Laurus cinnamomoides Mut.) with aromatic Puchery or Todaspuie (Laurus Putseri Mut.), with Almonds (Caryocar amygdaliferum Mut.), with four kinds of Styrax, with the Balsam of Tolu (Toluifera indica), with a Tea tree (Alstonia theæformis Mut.), with Ipecacuanha (Psychotria emetica Mut.), with Wax-palms (Ceroxylon andicola Humb.), with Carannia gum (Æginetia cannifera Mut.), with Winter’s bark (Wintera granadensis), with Quassia simarouba, and with the valuable dyeing woods. The Laurus Putseri of Mutis is the same as the Laurus Pucheri of Fl. Peruviana, vol. iv. t. 352. ined. The number of species of this genus figured in the fourth vol. ined. of the Flora Peruviana, amounts to thirty. The fruit of the Laurus Pucheri is frequently sold in the London shops under the name of Sassafras nuts. Caryocar amygdaliferum, Fl. Peruv. vol. v. ined. t. 470. Myrospermum balsamiferum, Fl. Peruv. 4, ined. t. 373. Myrospermum balsamiferum. In the history of sciences, it often happens that the person who knows how to diffuse, with a certain degree of boldness, the discovery of another, passes for the discoverer himself, instead of him who made that discovery. M. Mutis, a man of a liberal and enlightened mind, asked no reward from the Government. He occupied himself without ostentation in botanical examinations of the kinds of Cinchona which he discovered, and in the application of their barks through an extensive medical practice. In the year 1783 only, he obtained a royal salary, when the botanical expedition of Santa Fe was organized by M. Gongora, who was both archbishop and viceroy. In the year 1776, four years after M. Mutis’s discovery, Don Sebastian Jose Lopez Ruiz, a cunning and petulant physician at Santa Fe, a native of Ganama, found means to persuade the Spanish Government that he had first discovered Cinchona trees in New Granada. He sent samples of the new Cinchona to Madrid, spoke a great deal of the importance of this new article of commerce, and obtained a yearly pension of 2000 piastres for his reward. From records which M. Lopez remitted to me in the year 1802, by his brother, a canon in Quito, in order to prove to me the priority of his discovery, I have found that he knew the Cinchona about Honda only in the year 1774, and that he made the first medicinal experiment with it in the year 1775. M. Lopez did not long enjoy his full salary. The viceroy Gongora, who besides esteemed M. Mutis greatly, and his first secretary Don Zenon de Alonzo, who was a zealous promoter of the sciences, represented to the Court, that M. Lopez was not the first discoverer of the New Granada Cinchona bark. They immediately withdrew one half of the royal pension, ordered M. Lopez to travel to the Darien, where it was also pretended that Cinchona had been discovered; and as he refused to undertake a journey to such a pestilential climate, the viceroy discontinued the other half of his salary. Since this epoch a violent dispute has arisen respecting the priority of the discovery. Lopez made a voyage to Europe, and again contrived to procure for himself a salary of 1000 piastres. He ingratiated himself with M. Mutis’s botanical opponents, and these have mentioned him frequently since as co-discoverer. It is still more remarkable, that Colonel Don Antonio de la Torre Miranda wishes to prove, in his Topography of the province of Carthagena, (Noticia individual de los Poblaciones nuevas fundadas en la Provincia de Carthagena,) by means of testimonies, that to him belongs the honour of discovering the Cinchona bark in New Granada, because in the year 1783 (consequently eleven years after M. Mutis) he had discovered it near Fusagasuga. M. Mutis had begun, in Mariquita, a plantation of Cinchona and of Cinnamon of the Andaquia Missions, the remains of which we also saw. In the year 1800 the Spanish Government commissioned a French physician, M. Louis Derieux, to continue these plantations; to cultivate the indigenous Myristica, and to superintend generally the packing of the Cinchona bark in New Granada. He received a salary of 2000 piastres, with the title of Commissionado y Encargada de Investigaciones de Historia Natural en el Nuevo Reyno de Granada. He possessed as little botanical knowledge as M. Lopez, but was a man of strong mind and intellectual capacity. He had long before lived in Santa Fe, from whence he was dragged in chains to Carthagena, and thence to a prison in Cadiz, under the false accusation of revolutionary principles. After his innocence had been acknowledged, the Minister of State Don Mariano de Urquijo conferred on him the superintendance of the Cinchona forests. I travelled with him upon the Magdalen River, during which time his amiable son made several drawings of plants for me. The father stepped forth betwixt M. Mutis and M. Lopez. As the specific characters of the species of Cinchona excited the bitterest disputes between Zea, Ruiz, and Pavon, at Madrid, so the Cinchona bark, ever since its first discovery, has been an odious object of persecution in Santa Fe. I have learned with great regret, that soon after I left South America, M. Derieux had lost his salary, and had even been compelled to leave the vice-royalty, so that the Cinchona trees again grow without any superintendance, which, indeed, has hitherto not promoted their increase or preservation. Laurus cinnamomoides, Mutis.—Edit. Myristica otoba, Humb. et Bonpl. Plantæ Æquin. 2. p. 78. tab. 103.—Edit. In this simple historical narrative we have shown, that till the year 1772 all Cinchona bark was collected in the forests of Loxa, Ayavaca, and Jaen de Bracamoros, consequently between the 3rd and 5th degrees of south latitude, and that only from the year 1772 the medicinal Cinchonæ on the South American continent became used in the northern hemisphere; which species of Cinchona were discovered between the 4th and 5th degrees of south latitude. Until then, none were known in Peru Proper, especially in the mountains situated nearer to Lima, the capital. The vale of Rio Calvas, and the village Ayavaca, in whose neighbourhood the Cinchona Condaminea grows, famed since the year 1738, belong indeed in a political respect to Peru, but both are situated close to the confines of the corregiment of Loxa; and the bark of Ayavaca, like that of Jaen, was sold by the name of Cascarilla fina de Uritusinga, as well as that which was shipped in Payta. It was only in 1776 that the real commerce in Peruvian Cinchona bark began. Don Francisco Renquifo discovered near Huanuco, on the mountain San Christo val de Cuchero, the C. nitida of Ruiz, a species very nearly related to the orangecoloured one of Mutis (Cinchona lancifolia). An enterprising man, Don Emanuel Alcarraz, brought the first sample of it to Lima, and turned the use of it to advantage. The editors of the Flora Peruviana did certainly not penetrate, in 1779, as far as the Amazon River itself, but only to those rivers which flow immediately into it. They visited the beautiful valleys of Tharma, Xauxa, and Huamalies, and in 1779 determined the botanical characters of the North Peruvian species. This was consequently seven years after M. Mutis began his labours on the Cinchonæ of New Granada. Shortly afterwards, medicinal Cinchona bark was discovered at almost one and the same time in the most northern and in the most southern part of South America, in the mountains of Santa Martha, and in the kingdom of Buenosayres, near La Paz and Cochabamba, where a naval officer, Rubin de Celis, and the German botanist Taddæus Haenke, drew the attention of the inhabitants to this valuable produce. After the year 1780, therefore, Europe was superabundantly supplied from the ports of Payta, Guayaquil, Lima, Buenosayres, Carthagena, and Santa Martha, with Barks of various medicinal powers. Of these barks, some went direct to Spain, and some were transmitted by the smuggling trade to North America and England. West-Indian Cinchona barks were also occasionally mixed with those of the continent. They gave the name of Cinchona to barks which indeed possess great febrifuge powers, but which are derived from trees which do not even belong to the genus Cinchona. Thus they spoke in Cadiz of Cascarilla or Quina de Cumana and of Quina de la Angostura. They divided all bark into genuine and into spurious, without considering, that, although true Cinchona barks possess equal medicinal power, yet that they are capable of displaying specific differences in the manner of their efficacy. They asked for bark like that of Loxa, without considering that three or four kinds of Cinchona bark had ever since 1738 come from Loxa itself to Europe, which were the produce of quite different species of Cinchona. They forgot that the quality of the bark did not depend merely on its being from the C. lancifolia or from C. macrocarpa, but that locality of growth, the age of the tree, quick or slow drying, determine its efficacy. They mistook the same species, if the bark was, instead of canutillos, i. e. in thin quills, in thick cortizones, or even powdered. They mixed, sometimes through mistake, sometimes intentionally, the bark of Wintera granadensis and of the tanning Weinmannias, with the Cinchona bark, and even stained them with an infusion of Brazil wood. These circumstances gave rise to very singular prejudices in judging of Cinchona bark. Certain mercantile houses in Spain, which half a century since were in possession of the exclusive trade in Cinchona bark, endeavoured to throw disrepute on that from New Granada and southern Peru. They found complaisant botanists, who, by boldly exalting varieties to species, proved that all Peruvian Cinchonæ were specifically different from those which grow about Santa Fe. Physicians, like the Popes, drew lines of demarcation on the map. They insisted, that beyond a certain degree of latitude in the northern hemisphere no efficacious Cinchona could grow. But as the commerce with Cinchona bark from Huamalies and Huanuco, which Ortega, Ruiz, Pavon, and Tafalla recommended, soon fell into the hands of those who had formerly carried on the South Sea trade in the Cinchona bark of Loxa, the new Peruvian Cinchona barks naturally gained easier access into Spain than those from Santa Fe. The latter, on the contrary, which the English and North Americans could easily procure in Carthagena, as a port more accessible to the smuggling trade, obtained a preferable fame in London, Germany, and Italy. The effect of mercantile cunning went so far, that, at the royal command, a quantity of the best orange-coloured Cinchona bark from New Granada, which M. Mutis had caused to be peeled at the expense of the king, was burned, as a decidedly inefficacious remedy, at a time when all the Spanish field-hospitals were in the greatest want of this valuable product of South America. A part of the Cinchona bark condemned to destruction was secretly bought by English merchants in Cadiz, and publicly sold in London at high prices. Since M. Zea, the present director of the botanic garden at Madrid, has maintained, in the Annales de Ciencias Naturales, against the editors of the Flora Peruviana, that their Peruvian species of Cinchona are identical with those of M. Mutis, but that they have described one and the same species under two or three names, the dispute concerning the quality of Cinchona bark from Santa Fe has again become very animated. The Supplement of the Quinologia, by Ruiz and Pavon, is written with a bitterness which ought always to remain foreign to the calm course of scientific inquiries. Before we proceed from the history of the discovery of the Cinchona to its geographical diffusion, and their remaining physical relations, we must cast a glance upon the specific differences of the several kinds of Cinchona. A properly complete botanical disquisition is foreign to the purpose of this Treatise. M. Bonpland and myself will attempt it on another occasion, viz. in the description of the two thousand new species of plants discovered during our expedition, and partly determined already by our excellent friend M. Willdenow. As almost every species of Cinchona is peculiar to its own region, to its own altitude on the mountainous declivity of the chain of the Andes, it is unavoidably necessary, for the satisfactory treatment of the subject, to adjust at least the synonymy of the most important officinal species. I shall certainly make mention of that only, which I have had the opportunity of observing with my own eyes. ON THE CINCHONA FORESTS OF SOUTH AMERICA. BY A. VON HUMBOLDT. SECTION II. The genus Cinchona belongs to those tribes of plants, whose species have been considerably multiplied of late. Linnæus knew but two of them, viz. C. officinalis and C. Caribæa. Vahl, in his treatise on Cinchona Bark, enumerates nine; Lambert, in his English Monograph, eleven; Persoon, in his little Enchiridium Botanicum, one-and-twenty species. If we yet add to these, two Cosmibuenæ of the Flora Peruviana, belonging formerly to the genus Cinchona, the Cinchona excelsa of Roxburgh, found in the East Indies, my C. Condaminea, Vavassour’s C. spinosa, and Willdenow’s yet undescribed small-leaved C. brasiliensis, for which we are indebted to Count Hoffmannsegg in the expedition instituted by him for objects of natural history, then the number of species of Cinchona appears to have increased to twenty-seven. The authors of the Flora Peruviana alone have entertained the notion of describing thirteen new species, while M. Mutis has reduced all the Cinchonæ, examined by him in South America, to seven only. Even Professor Zea, in the Annales de Ciencias Naturales de Madrid, has ventured to prove that almost all the efficacious species, enumerated by Ruiz and Pavon, can be reduced to four, viz. C. lancifolia, C. oblongifolia, C. cordifolia, and C. ovalifolia, described by Mutis, in the year 1793, in the literary news of Santa Fe de Bogota. Skrivter of Naturhistorie Selskabet, B. i. H. i. p. 16. Description of the genus Cinchona, 1797. Synopsis Plantarum, P. i. p. 196. Anno 1801, No. 5. Papel Periodico de Santa Fe, 1793, No. 111. Indeed I hardly know any one tree varying more in the shape of its leaves than the Cinchona. Whoever determines single specimens of dried collections, and has no opportunity to examine or observe them in their native forests, will, as is the case with the Broussonettia papyrifera, be led to discover different species by leaves which are of one and the same branch. The yellow bark, C. pubescens, Vahl, we have found at one and the same time with fol. ovato-oblongis, ovato-lanceolatis, and ovato-cordatis. Mutis calls it C. cordifolia, because it is the only kind on which sometimes cordate leaves are found. The same species varies like the white Cinchona, C. ovalifolia, Mut. (C. macrocarpa, Vahl) foliis utrinque levibus and foliis utrinque pubescentibus. These varieties are represented in those well executed coloured drawings which M. Mutis presented me during my residence in Santa Fe, and which have been deposited, together with a complete hortus siccus of my expedition to the tropics, in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. Even the laurel-leaved C. Condaminea, the finest bark from Uritusinga, has very diversified leaves, according to the altitude at which it grows, and which equals that of Saint Gothard’s or Mount Ætna. It would deceive the bark-peelers (cascarilleros) themselves, if they did not know the tree by the glands, left so long unobserved by botanists. In Gonzanama, not far from Loxa, we made a great number of impressions, by means of printer’s ink, from these heterogeneous forms of leaves, in order to prove how unsafe all those distinctions are, which have been derived from the leaves only. The long known but yet very imperfect method of ectypa is particularly advantageous for this and similar purposes, as it offers to much-occupied travellers the means of procuring in a few minutes the most correct outlines. The more the Cinchona trees vary in the shape and smoothness of the leaves, according to the altitude in which they grow; to the severity or mildness of the climate; to the trees standing singly, or being closely surrounded by other plants; to the luxuriance of growth, and greater or less humidity of the soil; the more necessary is it, with regard to the diagnostic indications, to pay attention to the form of the flowers, particularly to the length of the anthers, to the proportion between the stamens and anthers, as also between the free and the adherent part of the filaments. It is not sufficient to examine the species in such as have a smooth or hirsute corolla, or the stamens exserted, or inclosed in the tube of the corolla. An attentive observer finds in almost every species a striking difference in the structure of the corolla. Thus, the C. parviflora, Mut. has pubescent filaments, and dilated at the base. C. macrocarpa, Vahl, anthers nearly sessile, placed in the upper part of the tube of the corolla. C. oblongifolia, Mut. filaments very short, anthers situated below the middle of the tube of the corolla. The Cinchona ovalifolia, Mut., or the white Cinchona, varies frequently with from six to seven, the C. Condaminea with from three to four stamens only. In the first, the limb of the corolla is frequently found divided into six or seven, in that of the latter, mostly into four segments. In the Cascarilla fina de la Provincia de Jaen, which M. Bonpland intends shortly to describe, I found the anthers always shorter than the free part of the filaments, and this free part again longer than the adherent one. On the other hand, I oberved that in the Cascarilla fina de Uritusinga, or the C. Condaminea, the anthers are twice the length of the free portion of the filaments, and the free parts are two-thirds shorter than the adherent one. There is scarcely any mention of these proportions in the otherwise excellent descriptions of Cinchonæ for which we are indebted to Vahl, Swartz, and the authors of the Flora Peruviana. In the mercantile world, several barks are called Peruvian bark which do not belong to the genus Cinchona. Thus, the excellent remedy which the Catalan Capuchin friars of the missions on the River Carony first made known, was called in Spain Quina de la Guayana, or de la Angostura. M. Mutis became acquainted with this bark in 1759 in Madrid, at the house of Don Vincente Rodriguez de Rivas: he employed it in his medical practice, and even then supposed that it did not belong to the genus Cinchona. Lœfling died in the missions of Carony without knowing this valuable substance. It was afterwards ascribed, sometimes to the Brucea ferruginea, which however grows in Abyssinia; sometimes to the Magnolia glauca; sometimes (which certainly was more probable) to the Magnolia Plumieri. In our expedition we had an opportunity of examining botanically the Cuspare tree, which yields the cortex Angosturæ. We discovered it to be a new genus, on which our excellent friend Willdenow, in the Transactions of the Royal Academy of Berlin, has conferred the name of Bonplandia . This name of my travelling companion has been retained for the Cuspare plant, since we have changed the Mexican Bonplandia geminiflora, described by Cavanilles, to Caldasia heterophylla. Pupel periodico de Santa Fe, No. 95. p. 337. Samml. Deutscher Abhandl. für 1801 und 1802, S. 36. The bark of Cumana, which for the last four or five years has been sent to Spain, through the exertions of Governor Don Vincente Emparan, under the name of Cascarilla de Nueva Andalusia, is likewise different from Cinchona. A chemist would hardly be able to distinguish this Cuspa bark from true Cinchona bark. It is an excellent remedy in the ague. Although we observed for almost a twelvemonth the Cuspa trees of Rio Manzanario near Cumana, yet it never fell to our lot to meet with its flowers. We do not know, therefore, by what distinctive mark it differs from the genus Bonplandia and Cinchona. The want of stipulæ, however, the situation of the leaves, and the whole habitus, make it more than probable that the Cuspa is not a Cinchona. The absence of stipulæ is particularly striking. Yet notwithstanding its alternate leaves, the Bark-tree of Cumana might still be a Cinchona, for the same reason that Cornus alternifolia stands isolated amongst twelve species of Cornus with opposite leaves. It has likewise remained doubtful to us, whether the bark of Acatamez, a village situated westward of Ville de Ibarra on the coast of the South Sea, betwixt Rio Verde and Rio Esmeraldita, be the produce of a species of Cinchona. The flower of this Acatamez bark-tree, with which we became acquainted during our stay in the town of Popayan, has not been hitherto examined by botanists. Mr. Brown, who long before us was in the South Sea, (in 1793,) has already given some account in Lambert’s Monograph of Cinchona of this new species of the torrid zone. Either from want of geographical information, or by corruption of the name, he calls it Bark of Tecamez, instead of Cascarilla of Acatamez. Lambert, p. 30. A fourth tribe of plants producing Peruvian bark, although of less medicinal power, is the genus Cosmibuena of the Flora Peruviana. To this belongs Cinchona longiflora, Mut. or C. grandiflora, Ruiz. It is a tree of great beauty, which we have frequently seen in deep hot valleys exhibiting its beautiful fragrant blossoms. The stamens lie deep and hidden in the tube of the corolla; and the fructification is so similar to that of the other species of Cinchona, that the Cosmibuena can hardly be admitted to constitute a distinct genus. On the other hand, it might be advisable to form the Cinchonæ with long stamina far projecting from the tube of the corolla, such as Jacquin’s C. Caribæa, Swartz’s C. angustifolia, C. brachycarpa, and C. floribunda, into a separate genus nearly allied to Cinchona. The seven species belonging to it possess this peculiarity, that all of them, except one, inhabit islands, viz. the Philippine, the West Indian, and the South Sea Islands, and that they prefer hot valleys, or even plains, to a high mountainous situation. I know but two species upon the South American continent which have stamina exserta, Lambert’s C. longiflora from French Guiana, and the yet undescribed Cinchona dissimiliflora, Mut. (staminibus longe exsertis, corollæ laciniis tubo longioribus, foliis cordato-oblongis) which, in the kingdom of New Granada, descends from the declivity of the mountains towards the plains as low as 200 toises above the level of the sea. C. Caribæa and C. angustifolia are found in the West Indies in still lower spots, even in regions which are sufficiently warm for plantations of sugar canes. All these Island Cinchonæ with projecting stamens have a smooth corolla. All of them have a capitate or obtuse stigma, the C. Philippina alone excepted, which M. Nee discovered at Santa Cruz de la Laguna, near Manilla. A divided stigma is, on the contrary, observed in all Cinchonæ with inclosed stamens. The corolla of the latter is sometimes smooth, sometimes hairy. M. Mutis has already proposed, in the literary News of Santa Fe, to separate the Cinchona with long projecting stamina from the rest. “I know not,” says he, “what my friend Linnæus thought of the Cinchona of the South Sea, for its reception in the Supplement only proves the favour of the son, whose opinion has not with me the weight of the opinions of the father.” The authors of the Flora Peruviana wish to make the Island-Cinchonæ, Portlandiæ; but M. Swarz, in Schrader’s Journal für die Botanik , proves, that in the Island-Cinchonæ, as in those of the continent, the capsule is a dissepimentum loculorum exacte parallelum, and in Portlandia a dissepimentum vere contrarium. Ruiz’s Portlandia corymbosa is therefore no Portlandia, but belongs to the Cinchonæ filamentis e basi tubi ortis, to C. Caribæa, C. floribunda, and C. brachycarpa, a groupe of plants which M. Swarz also wishes to unite into a separate genus on account of the flower, but not on the score of fructification. The C. excelsa, with enormous leaves, frequently of twelve inches length and fifteen inches breadth, discovered in the East Indies, stands almost in the middle, betwixt the West-Indian and South- American Cinchona, and its existence seems to dissuade us, as it were, from the proposed separation of the two tribes. However, the C. excelsa Roxb. approaches less to the Island-Cinchona than to the New Granada and Peruvian ones, corolla pubescenti, staminibus medio tubi insertis, nec e basi tubi nascentibus, antheris nec filamentis exsertis, margine seminum lacero, haud integro. The antheræ in this East India species are eight times longer than the filaments. It is difficult to find reasons for uniting the Island-Cinchonæ into a separate genus, in the formation of the fruit. They differ from the Cinchonæ of the continent of South America, “valvulis minus extrorsum divergentibus et receptaculo ovato nec lineari seminumque margine integro nec lacero. But except the smooth unindented coat of the seed wings, which I mostly find, the remaining forms of the fruits exhibit gradations, which link together, as it were, all the Cinchonæ. For the new genus of Island-Cinchonæ, delighting in hot plains, there would consequently remain: corolla glabra, filamentis longe exsertis ex basi tubi nascentibus. Semina margine integro cincta. Stigma simplex capitatum. But 1°. Many Cinchonæ staminibus inclusis, and C. grandiflora Ruiz, have corollam glabram. 2°. C. Phillippina has far projecting filaments, stigma bilamellatum, and yet, as it appears, semina margine integro cincta. 3°. C. excelsa has stigma subcapitatum leviter emarginatum, the seed not indented, and the filaments not projecting. Under these exceptions, it would certainly be bold to separate tribes of plants so nearly allied. Cavanilles Icones, t. iv. p. 15. t. 329. Flor. Peruv. t. ii. praef. and p. 49. Band. I. p. 358. Schrader, a. a. O. S. 359. The singular prickly C. spinosa of St. Domingo appears at first sight to belong least to the genus Cinchona. It is wonderfully small-leaved, and has frequently folia terna verticillata. Another prickly Cinchona differs still more in colour from the genuine Cinchona bark trees; it grows near Guayaquil, on the coast of the Pacific, and M. Tafalla showed it to us in the winter of 1803, during our stay there. This undescribed species is a creeper, and on that account in some measure related to the genus Danais from Madagascar, which Persoon ranks next in succession to the Portlandia, since the Pædeira fragrans, more resembling the Cinchona, has been separated from Pædeira fœtida. This new C. scandens of Tafalla has in other respects the complete fructification of the ague-curing Cinchona, and belongs indisputably to the most remarkable phenomena of the physiognomy of plants. The very same fruit of the genuine Cinchona is also produced by Pinkneya pubens Michaux, a tree which I found cultivated together with C. Caribæa in the excellent botanic garden of Mr. Hamilton near Philadelphia. The Pinkneya grows on Mary’s River, in the province of Georgia, and is already described by Bartram, propter calycis laciniam unicam foliaceam bracteæformem, by the name of Mussuenda bracteolata. The medicinal powers for the cure of ague possessed by this plant, nearly allied to the genus Cinchona, and growing without the tropics, have not yet been investigated. On the other hand Mr. Walker has shown in two excellent treatises, that the bark of Cornus florida from Virginia, and of C. sericea from Pensylvania and South Carolina, and even the Tulip tree (Liriodendron Tulipifera) may be used with advantage in North America as remedies against agues. In the kingdom of New Spain, where hitherto no species of Cinchona has been discovered, as the curator of the Academical Botanic Garden at Mexico has assured me, the yet undescribed Portlandia mexicana, discovered by M. Sesse, may supply the place of the Cinchona bark of Loxa. In the East Indies (according to D. Klein in Tranquebar) the Swietenia febrifuga, figured by Roxburgh, a plant of Swarz’s and Jacquin’s, Portlandia hexandra (Aublet’s Coutaria Speciosa), nearly allied to Cinchona, produces the bark of French Guyana, known in France by the name of Ecorce fébrifuge de Cayenne , and which is no more derived from a Cinchona, than is the bark of Cumana or the Cuspare of Angostura. Flor. Americana, I. p. 105. Walker on the virtues of the Cornus and the Cinchona compared. Philad. 1803. Rogers’s Diss. on the properties of the Liriodendron. Phil. 1802. Ventenat Tableau du Regne Vegetal, t. ii. p. 578. Thus much respecting the generic characters of the plants which approximate to Cinchona, and all of which belong to the great family of Rubiaceæ. We see that as Caoutchouc is obtained in abundance from the juices of the most diversified plants on the Orinoco and in Cayenne; from the Hevea on the Canno Pimichin, a branch of the Negro; from the tree Jacio in the kingdom of New Granada; from a new species of Ficus in the province of Popayan, near the Indian village La Cruz; from a Lobelia (to be described by us) in Bengal; from the Urecola elastica, figured in the 5th volume of Asiatic Researches; in Madagascar, from the Commiphora madagascarensis; so does nature also offer to us the ague-curing principle, or that mixture containing tannin and absorbing oxygene, which we obtain of a preferable quality from Cinchona Condaminea, C. pubescens, Vahl. and C. lancifolia, Mut. in plants which do not even belong to one and the same genus. A chemist would perhaps find greater differences between the West-Indian and South-American Cinchona barks, than between the Cuspa of Cumana and the Cinchona bark of Loxa; and yet the Cuspa tree, foliis alternis, stipulis nullis, is most probably a very remote genus from Cinchona. The Cecropia peltata is frequently mentioned as a tree yielding a part of the American caoutchouc. But I doubt whether any part of the new continent makes use of a juice so difficult to inspissate. After we have separated with care, partly what in a botanical point of view is nearly related to Cinchona, partly what passes in commerce amongst different nations by the name of China, Cascarilla, Quinquina, or Ecorce fébrifuge; after we have separated the Cinchonæ with inclosed filaments, not growing from the lower end of the flower tube with divided stigma and indented margins of the seeds, from the Island-Cinchona, whose long projecting filaments grow from the bottom of the flower tube, and which have, together with unindented seed wings, an undivided stigma; after we have examined the relation and supposed similarity of mixture of Cinchona, Portlandia, Coutarea, Cosmibuena, Pinkneya, Danais, Bonplandia, Cuspa, and the Acatamez tree, we pass to the definition of those species of Cinchona which have become an object of great importance in the practice of physic and in the intercourse of nations. Without the fundamental exposition of the specific characters, and without adjusting some part of the synonymy, every thing which I am going to state respecting the geographical diffusion of the Cinchonæ, and their physical relations, would remain indistinct and dubious, since (as I have mentioned above) a peculiar region has been destined for almost every species, and some botanists have, to the great detriment of science, given one and the same name to the most heterogeneous species. Thus, for instance, Cinchona longiflora, Mut. is totally different from C. longiflora, Lambert. It is true, they both have a smooth corolla, and belong to the Cinchonæ which are fond of heat and possess fewer medicinal powers. But the first, from New Granada, has inclosed stamens, and is probably identical with C. grandiflora, Flor. Peruv. On the other hand, the C. longiflora, Lambert, from French Guiana, belongs to those species which have long projecting filaments and very short capsules. Cinchona Caribæa, Jacq. is totally different from that Cinchona Caribæa described in the Journal de Physique, Oct. 1790. The diagnoses which I add are not borrowed from works already published, but arise partly from my own observations made from nature itself, partly from an instructive intercourse with M. Mutis. Characteristics of some Species of Cinchona. Vahl, in his excellent Monograph, augmented by Lambert, divides all the species into two groupes of plants, floribus tomentosis, staminibus inclusis, and floribus glabris, staminibus exsertis. This division possesses this fault, that two characters are placed opposite each other, which are by no means observed at one and the same time in all the species at present known. Certainly no Cinchona with tomentose flowers has long projecting stamens, for in the East Indian species the anthers are merely visible; but there are Cinchonæ which have, like C. parviflora, Mut. and C. grandiflora, Flor. Peruv. a smooth corolla and inclosed stamens. With more, although not with perfect justice, we might separate Cinchonæ staminibus inclusis, stigmate bilamellato, seminum ala denticulatâ vel lacerâ, and Cinchonæ filamentis insertis ex imo tubi nascentibus, seminibus membranâ integrâ cinctis. However, it seems more correctly logical to divide the Cinchonæ into those with smooth and into those with hairy corollas. The first division merely subdivides itself, according to the length of the stamens, into two smaller tribes, and (what is certainly an important object) all the useful and ague-curing species associate into one groupe. A. Cinchonæ corollis tomentosis. 1. C. Condaminea, corollæ tubo hirto, foliis ovato-lanceolatis utrinque glaberrimis, in axillis nervorum inferne scrobiculatis. Humb. et Bonpl. Plant. Æquin. fasc. ii. p. 29. tab. 10. This species, the fine bark of Uritusinga, could only be taken for the C. glandulifera, Flor. Peruv.; but this latter differs corollâ solummodo intus lanuginosâ, tubo externe glaberrimo, foliis inferne villosis. The inhabitants also enumerate the C. glandulifera, which is called (at Chicoplaya) Cascarilla negrilla, among the less efficacious species of Cinchona. Flor. Peruv. t. iii. p. 1. t. 224. If any one species deserved exclusively the name C. officinalis, it would be the tree which produces the Cascarilla fina de Uritusinga, a bark which has always been held in Spain as the most efficacious in tertian agues, and which at present is gathered only for the Royal Apothecaries’ Hall, and is therefore never met with in trade by lawful channels. Notwithstanding these preferences, we have, for several reasons, preferred giving it a new name, not derived from its quality or medicinal powers. 1°. Not one species, but all provided with hairy and woolly blossoms, are Cinchonæ of the shops, and no species deserves an absolute preference, since different species are to be applied according to the difference and form of the disease: for instance, in intermittent fevers of long standing, the C. Condaminea and C. lancifolia, Mut.; in diseases of the muscles or suppurating ulcers, the C. oblongifolia, Mut.; in the after treatment, to prevent relapses, the more mild C. cordifolia, Mut. 2°. In botanical writings, species of Cinchona totally distinct have been described by the name of C. officinalis. Had we bestowed the same name on the Cinchona of Uritusinga, it would have been confounded with the yellow C. cordifolia, Mut., the white C. macrocarpa, Vahl, or even with the C. nitida, Ruiz, which at different periods have been called C. officinalis. This latter point, equally important to the botanical synonymy and to the materia medica, merits a more circumstantial explanation. It is asked, What plant did Linnæus, in the 12th edition of the Systema Naturæ, call C. officinalis? Vahl maintains that it was his C. macrocarpa from the kingdom of New Granada, which he received from Ortega. But since C. macrocarpa, Vahl is nothing else but our white large-flowered Cinchona of Santa Fe, C. ovalifolia, Mut.; and as, according to M. Mutis’s own testimony, it had never been seen by Linnæus, then the C. macrocarpa, Vahl cannot be quoted as synonymous with C. officinalis, Linn. Syst. Nat. ed. 12. The great botanist of Copenhagen, whose early death is so justly deplored by all the friends of science, was misled to an erroneous synonymy in the following manner: 1°. He knew that Linnæus had at a later period founded his description of C. officinalis on specimens which he received from Santa Fe; and 2°. he erroneously presupposed that all the Cinchona forests in the neighbourhood of Santa Fe, discovered by M. Mutis, consisted of white Cinchona, or C. macrocarpa. Act. Havn. I. p. 19. Lambert, p. 22. Linnæus united, as already observed, two quite different plants under the denomination of C. officinalis. The dried specimen of which he made use for establishing the diagnosis, was (as M. Mutis has repeatedly and orally assured me) yellow Cinchona, C. cordifolia, Mut., and the same species which Vahl calls C. pubescens, but of which one variety has entirely smooth leaves, folia utrinque glabra. Linnæus quotes as synonymous the species described by Condamine in the Mem. de l’Academie, 1738: he consequently united one species from Santa Fe with another which grows exclusively in the neighbourhood of Loxa. Ruiz, in his Quinologia , calls a species C. officinalis, which he afterwards describes in the Flor. Peruv. by the name of C. nitida. He maintained at the time, that this tree, which grows in the forests of Huamalies and Xauxa, consequently far from Loxa, between the 10th and 12th degree South lat., was the Cinchona described by La Condamine. In the Supplemento a la Quinologia, p. 68, a botanical disputation which appeared against M. Zea, Mutis, and Cavanilles, this assertion is very justly withdrawn. Indeed the C. nitida or C. officinalis Ruiz is no other than the Cascarilla naranjanda from Santa Fe, or C. lancifolia Mut. Cascarilla officinal. Quinolog. Arct. II. p. 56. Since therefore four different species, the Cascarilla fina de Uritusinga, which Condamine has figured, C. pubescens Vahl, C. nitida Ruiz, and C. macrocarpa Vahl, have already received the name of C. officinalis, we have called the Cinchona of Uritusinga, in commemoration of its first discoverer, C. Condaminea. It is true that M. Ruiz, in his Supplemento a la Quinologia, gives it as his opinion, that the plant called at present Cascarilla fina at Loxa, was not the plant described by the French astronomer; but not only the unanimous testimony of all inhabitants of Loxa, Caxanuma, and Uritusinga, speaks against this, but also Jussieu’s Hortus Siccus at Paris. M. Bonpland has carefully compared our C. Condaminea with the specimens which were collected by Joseph de Jussieu and La Condamine. No doubt remained concerning the identity of the species. The C. Condaminea, like Myristica, Caryocar amygdaliferum, and many precious products of the tropics, is confined to a very small space, and it has been hitherto most imperfectly described. No botanists, neither Ruiz and Pavon, nor Tafalla, nor Nee, nor Hänke, nor Mutis, have observed it before us at its place of growth. The following may be considered as imperfect figures of the C. Condaminea: Mem. de l’Acad. de 1738, p. 114.; Lamarck Encyclopédie, pl. 164. fig. 1.; Vahl Skrivt. af Naturh. Selskabet I. tab. 1., and Lambert. Monogr. tab. 1. The true character of the leaves has been missed every where; and it would be bold to quote these synonyms, if it were not possible to verify them by examining the specimens which have served for the drawings. Our C. Condaminea grows under the 4th degree south latitude, on the mountainous declivity in the mean altitude between 900 and 1200 toises. It requires a milder climate than the orange-coloured Cinchona, C. lancifolia Mut., from Santa Fe. It is exposed to a mean temperature from 15 to 16 degrees Reaumur, which is about the mean warmth of the Canary Islands. I here insert an exact diagnosis of the C. Condaminea, which I drew up at Gonzanama, and of which (as it remained buried beneath astronomical manuscripts) M. Bonpland could not avail himself in the publication of the second fasciculus of Plantæ Æquinoctiales. Calyx tubulosus basi angustatus sub-5-gonus subhirsutus ore 5-dentato, dentibus ovatis acuminatis patentibus. Cor. hypocrateri-formis tubo cylindrico rubro lævissime hirto 5-gono (ad basin persæpe fisso) limbo 5-fido sæpissime 4-fido, laciniis ovatis acutis apice et margine ciliatis, vel tomentosis ciliis albis. Faux corollæ et totius tubi pars interior rubra glabra, nec ciliata. Stamina quinque, rarius tria et quatuor. In corollâ 4-fidâ sæpius stamina quinque numeravi. Filamenta ex rubro albescentia imo tubi adnata, cum eo cohærentia, tertiam tubi partem æquantia, eademque tantum tertiâ suæ longitudinis parte liberâ. Antheræ planæ lineares, parte liberâ filamenti duplo longiores. Germen rotundum subdepressum rubescens, sæpe punctatum et 5-sulcatum. Stylus fere longitudine tubi, crassus, teres. Stigma tubum vix superans, viridescens, compressum, bifidum sæpe bipartitum. Capsula calyce coronata, oblonga, flore tertiâ parte longior, bipartibilis, striato-costata, de medio hiscens, dissepimento parallelo. Semina plura compressa alâ membranaceâ crenulatâ cincta. Rami cicatrisati post casum foliorum, sub-4-goni; juniores glaberrimi, subpulverulenti. Folia petiolata decussatim opposita lanceolata acuta; integerrima, utrinque viridia, nullis venis rubris picta, fere laurina, glaberrima, in axillis nervorum infernè screbiculata. Glandulæ nullis pilis obsitæ, convexitate in paginâ superiori folii conspicua, venas altitudine superantes. Pagina folii inferior scrobiculum demonstrat. Petioli sæpè rubescentes, supernè plani, infernè teretes. Stipulæ deciduæ, oblongæ, carinatæ. Panicula axillaris et terminalis, folio longior floribus brevè pedicellatis. Size of the parts in a tree flowering for the first time:— Calyx, 1 [Formel] lines long; corolla, 5 [Formel] lines; capsule; 8 lines long, 3 [Formel] lines broad; according to Parisian measure. Full-grown leaves exclusive of the petioles, 4 inches 3 lines long, and 1 inch 9 lines broad. The young leaves frequently have a length of 5 inches, and the great breadth of 4 inches 7 lines. The C. Condaminea varies amazingly in the leaves before the tree comes into flower. In the shoots and very young trees we frequently find folia latè ovata and ovato-lanceolata. The older the tree is, the narrower are its leaves. In great luxuriance of growth, the little grooves frequently vanish, which appear on the upper side of the leaf as convex glands. On very broad leaves, in which the parenchyma is considerably extended, they are almost entirely wanting. However, even then, we always meet with single folia scrobiculata upon the same branch. 2. C. lancifolia foliis lanceolatis acutis utrinque glaberrimis. Mutis, Period. de S. Fe, p. 465. (et Flor. Bogot. Mss.) In Santa Fe it is known by the names of Quina naranjanda, Quinquina orangé, or orange-coloured Bark. Next to C. Condaminea, it is the most efficacious febrifuge of all the kinds of Cinchona; the species which M. Mutis, in his Quinologia, calls the Quina primitiva directamente febrifuga, because he prefers it to the three following species, and because he thinks (what is erroneous, however) the fine Cinchona of Uritusinga is the same species as Quina naranjanda of New Granada. The C. lancifolia has smaller leaves than the others with tomentose corollas. They are also continually smooth, when on the contrary the place of growth produces, in the yellow and white Cinchonæ, varieties with hairy leaves. The Quina naranjanda loves a rough climate. It grows between the 4th and 5th degree north lat. on mountainous declivities from 700 to 1500 toises high. The mean temperature of this place of growth is about equal with that of Rome. It amounts to 13° Reaumur; however the Cinchona trees ascending highest towards the summit of the mountains are mostly exposed to a temperature of from 8° to 9°. During the cold at nights, the thermometer falls in these alpine forests for hours as low as the freezing point; however, as far as 1500 toises high no snow falls in this latitude. The Quina naranjanda, together with the C. Condaminea, belongs to the more scarce species. Nature herself has produced them in the kingdom of New Granada in a much smaller number than those of the yellow and red Cinchonæ, which latter ones form here and there almost closely-connected shrubberies. C. lancifolia, on the contrary, stands always single; and what is to be regretted in so valuable a produce is, that it does not increase so easily by shoots from the root, as the C. cordifolia and C. oblongifolia. In the Monographs of Vahl and Lambert, no mention is made of the species called Naranjanda of Santa Fe. An indisputable synonym on the contrary is Cinchona angustifolia Ruiz, Suppl. à la Quinologia, p. 21, where an excellent figure is given. It is indeed surprising, that so exact a botanist as M. Ruiz should change the old Mutisian name C. lancifolia for C. angustifolia, since that name has previously been given by Swartz to an Island-Cinchona with a smooth corolla and long projecting stamens. Flor. Ind. occ. I. p. 380. Lambert, p. 29. Pl. 9. Professor Zea thinks, and, as it appears to me, with perfect propriety, that several species of the Flora Peruviana denote merely different states of the Quina naranjanda, such as depend on the age, the climate, and the place of growth. The following appear to be varieties of the C. lancifolia Mut.: 1°. C. nitida Flor. Peruv. II. Icon. t. 191. (Ruiz, Quinol. II. p. 56.) Ruiz’s Cascarilla officinal. 2°. C. lanceolata Flor. Per. II. p. 51. and C. glabra Ruiz Quin. II. p. 64. Cascarilla lampina, of which no figure is given. M. Zea thinks he may venture to add to these, the C. rosea Flor. Peruv. II. Ic. 199. a species which is said to be the most scarce in Peru, and (what agrees little with the nature of C. lancifolia) to descend from the mountains into the lowest regions. Ruiz Supplem. à la Quinol. p. 54. The Cinchona Bark so famous in Cadiz by the name of Calisaya, and of such particular medicinal power, belongs, according to Mutis, indisputably to C. lancifolia. Ruiz considers it, in his Quinologia, as synonymous with his C. glabra. But in his disputation against Zea, he withdraws this opinion, and assures us that there is no species growing in the neighbourhood of Huanuco which produces a bark similar to the Calisaya. The name Calisaya is that of the province producing this bark, which is situated in the most southerly of Peru, in the Intendencia de la Paz. P. 73 and 95. The second edition of a modern French work, Alibert’s Traité de Fièvres intermittentes, contains very exact figures of the orange-coloured Cinchona, as well as of the three following Mutisian species. They have been made from dried specimens, determined by M. Mutis, and supplied by M. Zea from his collection during his residence at Paris. Some of these figures are evidently copied from those in Flora Peruviana.—Edit. 3. C. cordifolia fol. orbiculato-ovatis sæpe subcordatis subtus tomentosis supra pubescentibus, Mut. Mss. Quina amarilla, Quinquina jaune, yellow Bark from Santa Fe, the species, as observed above, described by Linnæus in Syst. Nat. t. ii. ed. 12. p. 64. under the name of C. officinalis. The anthers in C. cordifolia and C. lancifolia reach as far as the upper parts of the flower-tube; when on the contrary, in the red Cinchona (C. oblongifolia) they are deeply hidden in the middle of the tube. C. cordifolia has two varieties. Var. β foliis vix cordatis utrinque glabris. γ foliis utrinque hirsutis. By the common people, in the kingdom of New Granada, it is called Velvet Bark. It grows under the 4th degree North latitude, in heights betwixt 900 and 1440 toises. Cordate leaves occur but seldom: however, almost every branch exhibits some of them. C. cordifolia Mut. is, according to Bonpland’s examination, identical with C. pubescens Vahl, as proved by Jussieu’s collection, from which Vahl received his specimen. Joseph Jussieu had collected, in 1738, this species of Cinchona and C. Condaminea in the forests of Loxa. The C. ovata Flor. Peruv. II. t. 195. Cascarilla pallida Ruiz, Quinol. Art. 7. p. 74. called in the neighbourhood of Pozuzo Pala de Guallerata, is likewise a synonym of C. cordifolia Mut. Ruiz and Pavon themselves have latterly acknowledged this identity. Supplem. à la Quinol. p. 18. The C. hirsuta Flor. Peruv. II. Ic. 192. Cascarillo delgado, or C. tenuis Ruiz, Quinol. II. p. 56. is, according to Zea, a variety of C. cordifolia Mut. Does C. purpurea Flor. Per. II. t. 193. or Cascarilla morado Ruiz, Quinol. Art. v. p. 67. also belong here? This species varies surprisingly in its leaves, and on one and the same tree too. 4. C. oblongifolia foliis oblongis acuminatis glabris, filamentis brevissimis, antheris infra medium tubi latentibus. Mut. Mss. Quina roxa, Quinquina rouge de Santa Fe, differt a C. lancifoliâ, 1°. foliis latioribus, majoribus oblongis nec lanceolatis; 2°. antheris haud in summo tubi latentibus. It grows under the 5th degree North lat. in heights from 600 to 1300 toises, and is particularly common in the neighbourhood of Mariquita, a small town, which was for a long time the seat of M. Mutis’s botanical expedition. It frequently bears much larger fruit than the white Cinchona, C. ovalifolia, for which reason it would deserve the name of macrocarpa with more propriety than the latter one. Its bark is less efficacious than that of C. Condaminea and C. lancifolia, yet more so than the yellow Cinchona, (C. cordifolia.) It is more stimulating, for weak constitutions, in inflammatory diseases frequently dangerous, but the more beneficial when applied externally in diseases of the muscles, suppurating and sphacelous ulcers. The yellow Cinchona, Cascarilla amarilla Quinol. Art. vi. p. 71. or C. magnifolia Flor. Per. II. Ic. 196. which, on account of the fragrant and orange-flower smell of its blossoms, is called in Peru, Flor. de Azahar, and in Popayan, Palo de requeson, is, according to the latter confessions of Ruiz, identical with C. oblongifolia Mut. or with the red Cinchona of Santa Fe. Period. de Santa Fe, p. 335. 5. C. ovalifolia fol. ellipticis supra glaberrimis subtus pubescentibus antheris in parte tubi superiori latentibus filamentis vix ullis. Mut. Mss. Quina blanca, Quinquina blanc: White Cinchona of Santa Fe. Var. β fol. utrinque pubescentibus. γ. fol. utrinque lævibus. Both varieties, particularly the first, have frequently a corolla with 6 or 7 divisions, and 6 or 7 stamens. It grows under the 3d to the 6th degree North lat. in heights from betwixt 700 and 1400 toises. The variety with smooth leaves is frequent near San Martha. The Cinchona macrocarpa Vahl. (Lambert, p. 22. t. 3.) is a true synonym of this, acknowledged by Mutis and Ruiz themselves. Amongst the Cinchonæ with hairy corollas it is the largest-flowering one of all. It must not, however, be confounded with C. grandiflora Flor. Peruv. II. p. 54. (Cosmibuena obtusifolia Flor. Peruv. III. t. 198.) having a quite smooth corolla. Suppl. p. 18. 6. C. brasiliensis foliis oblongis acuminatis, venis subtus pubescentibus paniculâ terminali, tubo calycis longitudine. Willd. Mss. A very small-flowering species, for which we are indebted, as observed already, to Count Hoffmannsegg, together with Aublet’s and Lambert’s C. longiflora from French Guiana, the only Cinchona which grows on the easterly coast of the South American continent. Nothing decisive is known about the height of its place of growth; but as it has been sent from the neighbourhood of the town of Gran Para, at the mouth of the Amazon river, and as in this region there are only low hills found, we are allowed to suppose that C. Brasiliensis belongs to the hot regions. The character of this species by M. Willdenow, tube of the corolla the length of the calyx, distinguishes this Cinchona from every one hitherto described. Throat of the corollæ hairy; hairs few, short, appressed, situated on the interior surface of the corolline laciniæ. 7. C. excelsa corollâ pubescente, filamentis e medio tubi nascentibus, antheris exsertis, foliis oblongis subtus pubescentibus. Roxb. Plant. of the Coast of Coromandel, ii. t. 106. The only Cinchona hitherto discovered on the continent of the ancient world, about whose medicinal use and its bitter no trials have however as yet been made. It has very small greenish-white flowers, and of all Cinchonæ the largest leaves, sometimes one foot long and five inches broad. The C. excelsa (Bundarvo of the Felinga Indians) grows in the mountain chain of the Circars, which runs along the northeasterly coast of the great peninsula of Hindostan. Retzius has at an earlier date, from accounts communicated to him by König, mentioned a Cinchona which grows in Malacca, opposite to the coast of Coromandel, and which produces the genuine terra japonica, called Cotta Cambar, a vegetable produce, which for a long time was erroneously ascribed to Mimosa spicata Pluk. Might not this Cinchona from Malacca be a different species from C. excelsa? Observ. Bot. fasc. iv. p. 6. B. Cinchonæ corollis glaberrimis. a. staminibus inclusis. 8. C. grandiflora, tubo corollæ longissimo, fol. lanceolatooblongis utrinque glabris. I have retained the former name of the Flor. Per. M. Ruiz calls this species at present Cosmibuena obtusifolia. (Flor. Per. vol. iii.) It is identical with C. longiflora Mut., a name which would cause confusion, since Lambert enumerates as C. longiflora the Island-Cinchona staminibus longe exsertis, described as C. Caribæa in Journ. de Phys. Oct. 1790. It is fond of warm regions, and descends from the mountains in heights from two and three hundred toises. It grows in regions whose mean temperature is from 18 to 19 degrees. 9. C. parviflora foliis ovatis glabris, filamentis basi dilatatis et pubescentibus. Mut. Mss. It has the smallest fruit of all Cinchonæ. b. staminibus exsertis. 10. C. dissimiliflora foliis cordato-oblongis glaberrimis, limbo corollæ tubo longiori, capsulis sublinearibus angustissimis. Mut. Mss. Next to C. longiflora Lamb. the only species of the continent which has stamina exserta. Grows in heights betwixt 200 and 700 toises in warm regions. 11. C. Caribæa Swartz. 12. C. longiflora Lamb. 13. C. lineata Vahl. 14. C. floribunda Swartz. 15. C. angustifolia Swartz. 16. C. brachycarpa Vahl. These six latter species grow all in the West-India Islands, and love a temperature of from 17 to 22 degrees R. 17. C. corymbifera Forster. Native of the Friendly Islands. 18. C. Philippica, discovered near Manilla by Nec. I do not venture to assert that all Cinchonæ hitherto known are comprehended within the eighteen species arranged here. I have merely wished to enumerate those which are known to me, partly in their natural state partly from good figures, and which to me appear indisputably specific from each other. C. acutifolia, C. micrantha, C. glandulifera, C. dichotoma, C. (Cosmibuena) acuminata, and C. spinosa, deserve a closer investigation. The genus might perhaps increase to twenty-four species.