"On the celerity with which the article is dried depends the price which it commands; but there are few instances where prejudice is so powerful as in the trade of the Cinchonas. in the dense forests it is impossible to perform this operation properly, and therefore the bundles of green bark are dispatched with all speed to the nearest inhabited place, where the person appointed to take the charge of them is stationed. Without any preparation they are laid in it spot exposed to the full action of the !mil, the greatest care being requisite to protect them from wet, as even a few hours' dew falling on the half-dried bark will give to the cinnamon-brown interior of the finest sort a blackish appearance, and lesson its value about one-half. The quickness of the drying and the general excellence of the article are indicated by the pieces being rolled up into several spiral windings, which form so solid a cylinder as to exhibit no cavity (e.anuto) within ; but such portions are rarely seen unfractured in Europe. The Cin chona barks are no less sensible of atmospheric moisture than the Coca, which I formerly described, so that the collectors always hasten to send them to the dry climate of the Andes, or the principal towns. An unavoidable loss however hence accrues : however perfectly the hark may have been dried in the woody region, it still loses, in three or four days after its arrival in Iluanuco, 12 to 15 per ecnt on its weight. The packages are made up into hales of four or five arroban each, and with the greatest possible care, in order that the beautiful canes of two feet long, into which the bark was coiled on the Montafin, may not be broken in the carriage. Trailing plants (bejucos) are used to tie up the bundles, and when they arrive in Lima they are undone, and sorted into lengths of different pieces previously to dispatching them in chests to Europe.' The trade in Huanuco Bark was very brisk twenty years ago at Lima, and the article went to the Spanish market under the name of Casearilla rosea, without being confounded with the Cortex Chime ruber, ns it is called by us. The barks from the districts of the Lower Iluallitga, of Huambo and Chachapoyas, &c., are, on the other hand, very little prized in Cadiz, and called Casearilla aroUada." Books and memoirs without end have been written to determine the different species of Cinchona that yield the barks of commerce, but with very little result There are difficulties in the way of this which persona unacquainted with the bark trade can hardly eatinutte. For example, the bark of the same species may be weak and valueless in warm lowland districts, and of the greatest price in alpine or mountainoum regions. The bark of the low country about S. Jaen de Bracantorros has uniformly proved worthless, although the same species which grow there afford a fair bark at Mayobamba, Chachmpeyaa, and Lamas in the mountains ; and others which at Maynas are per fectly inert, are energetic enough upon the sides of the mountains. It is related by Piippig that, in ignorance of this, many speculating mer chants have been ruined by the purchase of the bad lowland bark of Penh The rule in, that the beet bark always comes from mountain tops, from single trees growing in the coldest and most elevated spots. Some of the finest kinds are procured near the mountain villages of Cayantbe and l'illno, and from the mountains of Panatagnas and Pampayaco.
To pretend to reduce to their botanical opeeies, in the existing state of knowledge of Cinchoun barks, all the varieties that are known in shops or in commerce, would be a vain and hopeless task. Nothing can well be more startling than the discrepancies that exist upon the subject in books and collections; every collector, every writer, has his own set of specimens and opinions, and there is no possibility of reconciling them. There is not a chest of bark which, although called of one sort, has not probably been furnished by many different species ; and there is much reason to believe that many of the best known sorts of barks of the shops are in reality furnished by the same species under different circumstances. Fee asserts that gray Quinquina
passes into yellow by shades that cannot be distinguished; that yellow approaches the red both in colour and flavour ; and that nobody knows to this day with auy certainty the origin of even the barks of Loxa, Lima, Huanuco, or Carthagena. Poppig, who has so long lived in the Cinchona countries, seems to be of the same opinion, notwithstanding the details he has given respecting certain species— details of which we have availed ourselves in the following observa tions. In particular, with reference to this subject, to which a vast deal more importance is attached than it deserves, when speaking of the Huanuco Bark of commerce, Piippig's remarks are highly deserv ing of attention. He observes that as to the various species of trees that produce bark, and the different quality of the article itself, much prejudice exists. Without cause one species is rejected, and another prized for its imaginary qualities; and the same species is unmean ingly divided by the bark-collectora into several, upon uo known or intelligible principle. Cinchona glandulifera has three names, although scarcely the least trace even of varieties can be detected upon the closest botanical examination.
It is doubtful whether the species of any genus of plants are more variable in their appearance than those of Cinchona ; and hence those who have been acquainted with them from dried specimens only, or who have not been aware of their tendency to vary, have multiplied the species far beyond their true number, and an inextricable confu sion would have been the result in any genus less constantly before the eyes of the botanist. Thus the authors of the Flora Peruvians' in that work added thirteen supposed new species, and introduced many more into their Herbarium ; Mutis, on the other hand, who had ample means of studying Cinchonas in New Granada, declares that he was acquainted with seven only. Zea asserts that all the efficacious species of the Flora Peruvians. are reducible to four. Fee admits eighteen certain species ; and De Candolle reduces the number to fifteen, although he introduces two species unknown to Fee. Humboldt states that he has himself seen C. pobaccos, the yellow bark, with ovate-oblong, ovate-lanceolate, and ovate-cordato leaves on the same plant ; he adds, that some species, such as C. ntacrocarpa, have either leaves entirely smooth or downy on each side, and that even C. Conda ',dam has extremely different leaves, according to the elevation at which it grows. These statements alone are sufficient to show how much caution is required in distinguishing species in this genus ; but to this it is necessary to add, that there is too much reason to suspect that the authors of the Flora Peruvians,' in creating spurious species, were influenced by a wish to please the Spanish court, by appearing to prove that the barks of Peru, from which the Spaniards exclusively derived so large a revenue, were altogether different from those of New Granada, which other nations could easily procure direct from Carthagena. Humboldt adds, that mercantile cunning with reference to this subject was carried so far, that at the royal command a quan tity of the best orange-coloured Cinchona bark from New Granada, which Mutis had caused to be picked 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 indispensable product of South America. It should however be observed that some oT Ruiz and Pavon's species have been restored by a recent writer upon the authority of dried specimens; but it appears to us safer in such a case as this to take the opinion of a man like Humboldt, who studied Cinchonas in their native forests, than that of a botanist who can be acquainted with them only from Herbaria.