26 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BULLETIN 
houses, where crowded conditions necessitated growing in 
pots, and it is now twelve feet in height. The flowers are very 
fragrant and borne in massive drooping panicles, small, bell- 
shaped, white in color, with numerous fine hairs. The 
leaves are large, ovate, green with reddish venation. 
The quinine tree yields its maximum amount of alkaloid 
when between six and nine years of age. Several methods 
are used in the collection of bark of both roots and stems: 
(1) The shoot or small tree is uprooted and entirely stripped 
of bark, this meaning the total loss of the plant. (2) The 
trunk is cut near the ground, the stump producing young 
shoots which form a fresh plant. (3) The bark is stripped 
in longitudinal layers, leaving sufficient bark between to 
prevent injury. The exposed strip is sometimes covered with 
moss for protection, and eventually is covered by the growth 
of the cambium which at the same time forms a fresh layer 
of bark. By using this latter method a continuous supply of 
bark is secured. 
Quinine is now widely cultivated in India and Ceylon, 
where it was introduced in 1861. For this purpose col- 
lectors were sent to Peru to secure seeds, owing to the 
fact that the seeds lose their germinating power very soon 
after ripening. They were Sa) pe to the Botanic Gapten 
at Kew, where three thousand plants were grown and 
sent to India, Ceylon, and the West Indies, in Wardian cases. 
By 1893 these plants were fully established and quinine was 
made available for use by the natives, put up in five-grain 
doses and sold for one pice (about half a cent). Before this 
achievement, the Indian government purchased over 200,000 
dollars’ worth of quinine merely for the state of Bengal, 
which emphasizes the importance of the introduction of this 
plant into India alone. 
NOTES 
Mr. Alexander Lurie, Horticulturist to the Garden, at- 
tended the meetings of the American Society of Horti- 
cultural Science, at Pittsburgh, December 27-31. 
At the Patriotic Food Show at the Coliseum, February 
2-13, the Garden was represented by an exhibit of fungi and 
bacteria injurious to fresh and preserved food products. 
A meeting of the Society of Sigma Xi was held in the 
graduate laboratory on February 15, Dr. L. R. Nickel giv- 
ing an address on “The Battle of the American Chemical 
Industries.” 
On February 20, Mr. G. H. Pring, Floriculturist to the 
Garden, gave an illustrated lecture, at the Central Library, 
