Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/795

Rh an ovoid or sub-cylindrical, splitting from the base, and held together at the apex. The numerous s are flat and winged all round. According to the enumeration of Bentham and Hooker, 36 have been distinguished, but of these not more than about a dozen have been  utilized. The are natives of the  of, their  range extending from 10°N. to 22°S. .; and they flourish generally at an elevation of from 5000 to 8000 above, although some have been noted growing as high up as 11,000 , and others have been found down to 2600. The are valued solely on account of their, which as cinchona, ' , or vian is, and long has been, the source of the most valuable  and  s that have ever been discovered. The earliest well-authenticated instance of the use of cinchona  is found in the year 1638, when the ess of, the  of the  of , was cured of an attack of  by its administration. The was recommended in her case by the  of, who was himself said to have practically experienced its supreme virtues eight s earlier. The name Cinchona is due to the connection of the ess of with the introduction of the remedy; and it is argued by Mr Markham and others that therefore the term should be written Chinchona. A knowledge of the virtues of the was disseminated throughout  by members of the, whence it also became generally known as '. According to another account, this name arose from its value having been first discovered to a  who, when prostrate with, was cured by the administration of the  by a n.

The procuring of the in the dense s of,, , and is a work of great toil and hardship to the  Cascarilleros or Cascadores engaged in the pursuit. The grow isolated or in small clumps which have to be searched out by the experienced Cascarillero, who laboriously cuts his way through the dense  to the spot where he discovers a. Having freed the from adhering s and twining, he proceeds, by beating and cutting oblong pieces, to detach the   as far as is within his reach. The is then felled, and the entire  of  and es secured. The of the smaller es, as it dries, curls up, forming &ldquo;quills,&rdquo; the thicker masses from the s constituting the &ldquo;flat&rdquo;  of. The drying, packing, and transport of the are all operations of a laborious description conducted under most disadvantageous conditions.

The enormous consumption of these, and the wasteful and reckless manner of procuring them in long ago, caused serious and well-grounded apprehension that the native  would quickly become exhausted. The attention of an communities was early directed to the necessity of securing steady and permanent supplies by introducing the more valuable into localities likely to be favourable to their. The first actual attempt to rear was made in  in 1849; but the effort was not successful. In 1854 the seriously undertook the task of introducing the  into the  of, and an expedition for that purpose was fitted out on an adequate scale. Several hundreds of young were obtained, of which a small proportion was successfully landed and planted in ; and as the result of great attention the  of cinchona s in  is now highly prosperous and promising. The desirability of introducing cinchonas into the was urged in a memorial addressed to the  between 1838 and 1842 by Sir Robert Christison and backed by Dr Forbes Royle; but no active step was taken till 1852, when, again on the motion of Dr Royle, some efforts to obtain  were made through ar agents. In the end the question was seriously taken up, and was appointed to head an expedition to obtain young  from  and convey them to. In 1860 under 's superintendence a first consignment of was shipped from  in, and  in a favourable situation in the. For several subsequently additional supplies of  of various  were obtained from different regions of, and some were also procured from the  s in. Now the culture has spread over a wide area in Southern, in , on the slopes of the , and in ; and recently s which already present a promising appearance have been established in. Exclusive of private enterprise, the in the  s in  now amount to several millions, and in the  s they have attained a height of from 20 to 30. The introduced in the East are principally Cinchona officinalis, C. Calisaya, C. succirubra, C. pitayensis, and C. Pahudiana, some agreeing with certain s and s better than others, while the yield of  and the relative proportions of the different  differ in each. In the original memorial above alluded to, presented to the by Sir R. Christison, he, according to a communication to the   Society (Trans., vol.xi. p.111), pointed out that &ldquo;the transplantation, if successful, would become remunerative. For although it would be a very arduous undertaking were the to be collected only by cutting down large, which do not attain sufficient growth in less than twenty or twenty-five , being the only  method, the case would be very different were it shown that  could be ably taken from  very much younger, and without either destroying or even injuring them. Now, I had ascertained,&rdquo; continues, &ldquo;by that—contrary to the analysis of some  — of  was to be obtained from fine quills of yellow  taken from s two or three s old in as large proportion as from the large flat bark from the s and great es. Consequently, as it appeared, from the facility with which the grew in their native  by suckers from the old s, when the  are properly cut down, that young s might safely be cut from them at an early period, it followed that the collection of cinchona  might be conducted in the same way as that of   at, where only twigs of one or two s' growth are cut for the purpose, and without injuring the. . .. This doctrine has proved true, so true that it has been found suitable in even to treat the cinchona  like  beds in, by cutting them down altogether when young, thus using only s for the , and trusting to suckers for renewing the growth of the ; and that the result has been the introduction of fine  from  in such bulk as to have been sold by auction in the   only nine s after the first cinchona  were transplanted to .&rdquo; , to whom the success of n s is largely due, introduced a system of ing the , which consists in wrapping the growing  in a layer of damp , whereby the yield of  is increased, and the growth of renewed  promoted. It has been pointed out by Dr De Vrij, and the observation is confirmed by Mr D. Howard, that renewed contains the  not only in different proportions from the