20 
also, we were * Gaabiéa to collect, from the editor of the Flore 
- 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 Cin- 
. ¢chona bark of New Granada, or the Peruvian Cinehona nitida, 
described by Ruiz and Pavon; be identical with the genuine Cin- 
chona of l 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 re~ 
spective districts. was the genuine one from Uristusinga. In the 
second fasciculus of our Aquinoctial Plants* we have shown, that _ 
this latter, the Cascarilla fina de Lowa, is entirely different from 
Yinchona. lancifolia. of Mutis, and from all these 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 above- 
named excellent botanists, yet the accidental advantage has fallen 
to our lot, of having ourselyes 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, 
hy these circumstances, L think myself enabled» to speak with 
* Plantes Equinoctiales, par Messrs, Bonpland et Humboldt, Troisieme livraison, p. 39, 
