Ea 
oe ad 
NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
Amidst the many recent political disturbances in Paris, science 
has not been wholly neglected by its votaries, for there has appeared 
of late one of the most useful and beautiful of botanical publications, 
on a subject which needed beyond any other full and faithful illustra- 
tion: “ Histoire Naturelle des Quinquinas, par M. H. A. Weddell, 
Docteur en Science, accompagné de 34 planches dessinées par Rio- 
creux et Steinheil: folio. Paris, 1849.” 
This important work we had the pleasure of mentioning in an early 
number of our last volume of this Journal, when noticing the * Revue 
du genre Cinchona” of the same able author. During the interesting 
scientific mission under M. De Castelnau, undertaken in 1843 for the 
exploration of the interior provinces of Brazil and Peru, M. Weddell, 
as there detailed, formed one of the party. After accompanying the 
other officers for two years, he separated from them in 1845, upon the 
confines of Mattogrosso, in order to carry out his researches in another 
direction, and which he continued for a year after their return, his 
own taking place in 1848. The Museum of Natural History of Paris, - 
we learn from the * Annales des Sciences Naturelles, who had entrusted - 
this mission to M. Weddell, * have only to congratulate themselves 
on this appointment ; and they desire to render justice to the courage, 
intelligence, and scientific knowledge of the young traveller, who with 
the feeble means which we were able to place at his disposal, alone, in 
the midst of an immense territory, difficult of investigation and almost 
a desert, has so well accomplished his object." 
Among other important results of the journey, is the publication 
of this work on Cinchonas. Few plants have been more celebrated, 
few have rendered greater services to mankind than these; yet none 
have been less understood or more imperfectly studied. In 1639 the 
medicinal properties of the Cinchonas w wn to Europeans 
residing in Peru, and the first writi 
1650. La Condamine and Joseph 
forests of Loxa at nearly one and tl 
later, Ruiz and Pavon, and the cel 
Spanish Government to insp 
Peru, the latter in New G 
