December i, 1883.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



395 



of paragraphs 6, 7 aucl 8 are detailed tlie successive views 

 of Mr. Cross, Colouel Beddome, myself, Dr Bidie, and 

 the Kew authorities. I entered on the examiuatiou of 

 the Nilgiri trees with no strongly settled opinion as to 

 their nature, though my Ceylon experience had inore and 

 more inclined me to look iipon them as hybrid forms 

 rather than as one or more autonomous species. 



I found the forms presented to be ]\i3t those so common 

 in Oeylon plar;tations. Generally robust well-grown trees, 

 larger, hardier and healthier than either the officinalis or 

 siiccinihra among which they were scattered and often 

 flourishing where neither of them can thrive, Botamc- 

 ally, there was the same range of variety, the extreine 

 form in one direction, with its dark green smooth shining 

 leaves, closely approaching some of the large-leafed forms 

 of C. officinalis, and that in the other direction with its 

 larger paler thinner leaves more or less pubescent beneath, 

 so close to the hairy form of 0. succiruhra as to be often 

 with difficulty distinguished from it. Between these, as 

 regards color and pubescence, were many intermediates, 

 though undoubtedly, with a little ingenuity, the whole 

 can be thrown iuto the two groups. There are not many 

 onDodabetta (where are no succirulirti), and these are 

 nearly all of the glabrous sort, but on N.iduvatam they 

 are much more numerous, and in parts both there and at 

 Hooker plantation they stand out couspiciously above the 

 more or less sickly and stunted kinds round them. 



As the chief of the tt st-points as to origin was the alleged 

 occurrence of a few "in the oldest plots" at Naduvatum, I 

 particularly examined several. They are certainly growing in 

 plot No. 1, planted in 1SG2, and are of both the glabrous 

 and pubescent kinds.* They are also undoubtedly old 

 trees, but that they form really a part of the 18G'2 

 jilniiliiiff cannot, I think, be affirmed with certainty. From 

 tlie look alone I do not think it possible to say 

 whether a given tree be twenty years old or sixteen ; it 

 is therefore necessary, in the present case, to see whether 

 tliere are any grounds for supposing that the lohiistn trees 

 may have been supplies put in to fill up vacancies in the 

 original planting. With one tree this appeared to be the 

 case, as it was clearly out of the line, but in two others 

 there was certainly nothing in the smTOundings to sug- 

 gest that they were not part of the same planting as 

 those around them. But the question is of such import- 

 ance that it requires further examination. 



C. sMciruliya hist flowered in 18S.3,f but I have no evid- 

 ence that C. officinalis did so before 1SG5. In that year, 

 however, both species ripened seed, and in the next the 

 majority of the young plants were being raised from seed. J 

 We have it on Mr. Mclvor's authority that ''in IStiG a 

 number of hybrid seedlings were produced " and that " the 

 selected varieties were jilanted here and there in every 

 way, soil, exijosure and elevation available. "§ In the same 

 year, 18(36, six hundred of the original trees, planted out 

 in August and September 1862, were cut down for their 

 hark ;|| and though nothing is said as to the filling up 

 of the gaps thus caused, tins was certainly done, as is 

 evident from the regularity of the existing plots. It is 

 most likely to have l^een effected with the new seedhngs: 

 two or three years later, Mr. Mclvor expressly states that 

 "all the supplies arc plants raised from seed. "If What 

 therefore more probable than that some of these " hybrid 

 seedUngs," which were planted " in every way available " 

 should find their way into the 1862 plantations along with 

 the other supplies in 1866-67. 



One of the trees pointed out to me in this 1862 plot 

 was one of those hybrids denounced by Mr. Broughton 

 (31st July 1871) »s " combining the bad qualities of both 

 their parents. " ** Now, he could scarcely have called 



* Nos. 2, 3, and 4 of Dr. Bidie's set. 



t Kew Report for 1863 ; Jouru. Bot., 1863, p. 254. 



{ Mclvor, Reports, 1804-65 and 1865-66, para. 4. 



§ Id., Report, 2ud August 1875. Mr. Mclvor heUeved 

 these to be the result of his experiments in artificial cross- 

 fertilization ; it may be so, but it is perhaps more prob- 

 able that tbey arose naturally. In either case theyappeared. 



jl Mclvor, Report for 1866-67, para. 2. This important 

 fact seems to have been overlooked by subsequent writers. 



H Mclvor, Report, 1869-70. 



** This particular tree is a glabrous rohiista \vith the 

 seaf more elongated than usual. Colonel Beddome cou- 

 lidered it " glabrous ptthscem. " 



tills ti-ee a hybrid if he had not good grounds for believ- 

 ing that it was no part of the original 1862 i)lantatiou 

 in which it grew ; indeed he states definitively (1 3th Feb- 

 ruary 1873) that the hybrids " appear only among seedlings, 

 there heiny none among the oriyinal trees."* I may add 

 that in this same " 1862 " plot there are several trees 

 of Calisaifa, which cannot be any part of the first planting. 



A search through the late Superintendent's papers and 

 the plantation records might very probably give much in- 

 formation as to this and other historical matters. He has 

 stated that he always reckoned 30 per cent of every 

 year's planting as failures to be subsequently fiUed by 

 supplies, a fact which the recent compilers of statistics of 

 the plots seem to have scarcely fully realized.^ 



These remarks may be considered a sufficient answer 

 to the first of Dr. Bidie's arguments_ (see para. 8.) I 

 will now proceed to discuss the remainder of them. 



20. Mr. Cross's credibiliti/. — Dr. Bidie thinks Mr. Cross's 

 positive statement that he sent plants of ' ' Fata de (>al- 

 Unazo" to India to be probably true. To my mind I must 

 say that "probability" points rather the other way. Dr. 

 Bidie has himself remarked on the " Httle reliance" that 

 can be placed on that traveller's memory, and indeed we 

 have abundant evidence of its treacherous character. It 

 has made him give two cUfferent accounts of this very mat- 

 ter, caused him to forget well-known facts and make im- 

 fouuded statements about Dr. Spruce, hopelessly confused 

 him over the distmctions between snceirnhra and nricruntha, 

 and supplied him with a totally erroneous name for the 



?lant " No. 3" of his own collection, now sho^vn to be C. 

 [umholdtiana. His reminiscences indeed seem singularly 

 confused, and I do not consider it necessary to further 

 allude to them. 



21. AUeijed stabiUfy of type.— Another point urged by 

 Dr. Bidie (d) in favor of the autonomous nature of this 

 plant is, as ho thinks, the want of a decided tendency, " as 

 in the case of hybrids." to vary more than is usual in other 

 undoubted species of cinchona. I need scarcely remind Dr. 

 Bidie that cultivated plants supply us with abundant ex- 

 amples of known hybrids as permanent as most species ; but 

 as regards "C. robusta" our experience in Ceylon is very 

 different. It is notorious that the seed is most uncertain, 

 and it is well known that Mr. Mclvor would not trust it. 

 On his visit to Ceylon in 1875-76 he gave seed of his be.=t 

 " pubescens" to several careful planters here ; the result in 

 one case was 10 per cent like the parent, and the remain- 

 der vai'ieties of succirubra and officinalis ; and this has been 

 the so general experience here that I am indeed surprised 

 to read of a different state of things in the Xilgiris. In 

 Darjiling, Dr. Kmg states that " about half" the plants 

 from seed come up " officinalis."t Colonel Beddome could 

 not deny these facts, but ti-ied to explain them by careless 

 collection of seed, but I know of cases where this soui-ce of 

 fallacy was most carefully guarded against with no dift'er- 

 euce in the result. Colonel Beddome himself must at the 

 last have had doubts, for he allows that it is better to grow 

 the plant from cuttings. { It is indeed this reversion to ap- 

 parently parent forms that is one of the chief reasons for 

 regarding robitsta as a hybrid. 



But we have more c&ect testimony of it origin. I am 

 assured by plajiters of credit that they have grown both 

 glabrous and pubescent robusta from seed of ordinary 

 officinalis, and thit it is by no means unfrequent for seed- 

 lings of them to appear in .seed-beds on estates where no 

 trees but officinalis ekndsnccirnbra occur. I havemyselt seen 

 seedlings of rohnsta self-sown where there are no parent 

 trees of the sort whence they could have been derived : and 

 at one time I was inclined to regard it merely as a variety 

 of officinalis. There are, I think, grounds for believing that 

 SHccirabra generally suppUes the pollen and is therefore the 

 male parent, both in the case of robnsta (succii'ubra M oifi- 

 cinalis) and anglica (succirubra Mcalisaya). I do not 

 attach any importance to bark-chemistry alone as a botan- 

 ical character, but it may be noticed, as bearing on the 

 derivation of these trees, that the analyses of their barks 

 (though very variable) combines as a rule the character- 

 istics of both Red and Crown barks. 



* Letter to Howard, printed in his " Quinology " p. 

 113. The italics are my own. 



f In his Report of the Bengal Cinchona Cultivation for 

 1881-82 Dr, King distinguishes " six distinct forms" of these 

 )'oi«sto hybrids. 



X Beddome, Report on visit to the Sikkim Plantations. 



