29 
‘moter of the sciences, represented to the Court, that M. Lopez 
was not the first discoverer of the New Granada Cinchona bark. 
They immediately withdrew one half of the royal pension, or- 
dered M. Lopez to travel to the Darien, where it was also pre- 
tended that Cinchona had been discovered ; and as he refused to 
undertake a journey to such a pestilential climate, the viceroy dis- 
continued the other half of his salary. Since this epoch a violent 
dispute has arisen respecting the priority of the discovery. Lopez 
made a voyage to Europe, and again contrived to procure for 
himself a salary of 1000 piastres. He ingratiated himself with 
M. Mutis’s botanical opponents, and these have mentioned him 
frequently since as co-discoverer. It is still more remarkable, 
that Colonel Don Antonio de la Torre Miranda wishes to prove, 
in his Topography of the province of Carthagena, (Noticia indi- 
vidual de los Poblaciones nuevas fundadas en la Provincia de 
Carthagena,) by means of testimonies, that to him belongs the 
honour of discovering the Cinchona bark in New Granada, “be- 
cause in the year 1783 (consequently eleven years after M. Mu- 
tis) he had discovered it near Fusagasuga. -M. Mutis had be- 
gun, in Mariquita, a plantation of Cinchona and of Cinnamon* 
of the Andaquia Missions, the remains of which we also saw. 
In the year 1800 the Spanish Government commissioned a French 
physician, M. Louis Derieux, to continue these plantations; to cul- 
tivate the indigenous Diyristica,t and to superintend generally 
the packing of the Cinchona bark in New Granada. He received a 
salary of 2000 piastres, with the title of Comm sstonado y Encar- 
gada de Investigaciones de Historia Natural en el Nuevo Reyno 
de Granada. He possessed as little botanical knowledge as 
_ M. Lopez, but was a man of strong mind and intellectual capa- 
city. He had long before lived in Santa Fe, from whence he 
* Laurus cinnamomoides, Mutis.—Edit. ! 
¢ Myristica otoba, Humb, et Bonpl. Plante Equin, 2. p, 78. tab, 103,—Edit, 
L 
