3 21 
some confidence on so difficult a subject, which, by a variety of 
controversies, has become more and more perplexed. 
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 
_ ef 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 at- 
tention of the Indians to this tree. Lambert, in his Mono- 
graph 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 de- 
scribed 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 ¢ Vul- 
tur 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 volean de Pinchincha, which I should be inclined 
to call Felis andicola,) and which we have met with in heights 
of 2.500 toises: 3 Pia oe | 
The story, so 0 ten 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 Chin- 
~* A Description of the Genus Cinchona, 1792, p.39. + Near to the town of Quito. > 
G 
