23 
ever, is current there, that the Jesuits at the felling of the wood had 
distinguished, according to the custom of the country, the dif- 
ferent kinds of trees by chewing their barks, and that on such occa- 
_ sions 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 asser- 
tion of European authors, and among them the late writers Ruiz 
and Pavon, who ascribe the discovery to the Indians. The medi- 
cinal powers of the Cinchona was likewise entirely unknown 
to the inhabitants-of the kingdom of New Granada. : 
A century elapsed before any botanical description was ob- 
tained of the tree whose pulverized bark yielded the Jesuit’s 
Powder. The astronomer La Condamine, who ranged with in- 
describable: vivacity through all departments of humai _know- 
- Jedge, and by whom there are several neat "botanrell 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 
ef the Cinchona appeared in 1738 in the Mem. de l’Academie. 
Afterwards, in the year 1739, Joseph de Jussieu explored the — 
eountry in the vicinity of Loxa. There, and in the neighbour- 
hood of Zaruma, he gathered a great number of specimens, which 
are still to be fons. in Jussiew’s collection at Paris, and which 
we have compared with our own, collected sixty years at 
the same spot. Amongst these was the Gtichona co pn 
which Vahl has described as new, but which, as we shall 
subsequently prove, is the first Cinchona officinalis of Linné’s 
Systema Nature (12th edition). In the year 1743 La Con- 
* Voyage a |’ Equateur, p, 31, 75, 186, and 203, 
