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777^ ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



it impossible to express my appreciation 

 of the great privilege of working in the 

 Kew Herbarium, and of the care taken 

 by the director and his assistants in 

 placing every facility at my disposal. It 

 may not be out of place to remark that 

 large as is the staff of botanists at Kew 

 their collection is so vast and rapidly 

 growing, and their duties so extensive, 

 that a very large number of their collec- 

 tions are undetermined, and this in spite 

 of the fact that they are, I believe, the 

 hardest worked lot of men with whom 

 I have ever associated. At the British 

 Mu.seum, where I spent but a very short 

 time, the condition seemed even worse, 

 and it seemed to me that the incessant 

 labors of a score of competent botanists 

 for a year would scarcely suffice to get 

 their collections perfectly named up to 

 date. 



In the direction of Cinchona studies, I 

 was able to obtain much better assistance 

 in pharmaceutical circles than at any of 

 the herbaria. My previous efforts, by 

 means of books and such specimens as I 

 had access to, to determine the Bolivian 

 forms of Cinchona had resulted somewhat 

 unsatisfactorily. There seemed a clear 

 discrepancy between my results and the 

 current determinations of .specimens. 

 These discrepancies I had thought to re- 

 concile at the Kew Herbarium, but my 

 disappointment came quickly. From my 

 point of view nearly all the specimens 

 there labelled as Cinchona Calisaya were 

 distinct from that species. After intently 

 considering this pioblem, I was forced to 

 maintain my original position, and to be- 

 lieve that the Kew specimens were 

 wrongly named ; notwithstanding the 

 fact that the correctness of this conclusion 

 involved the wrong naming of millions 

 of trees at all the centres of Cinchona 

 cultivation outside of America, at the 

 time that those localities contributed their 

 specimens to Kew. To positively de- 



termine whether this view was the cor 

 rect one, it was necessary that I should 

 examine Weddell's type specimens of 

 Cinchona Calisaya, and I saw nothing 

 before me but to make a trip to Paris for 

 that purpose. This necessity was avoided 

 by a most curious accident, as I might 

 almost call it. Mr. Holmes one day in- 

 vited me to visit with him the home of 

 Mr. Howard, the grandson of the dis- 

 tinguished quinologist. In spite of a 

 strange succession of accidents and mis- 

 understandings, I succeeded in reaching 

 the place upon the day appointed, and 

 greatly enjoyed the examination of the 

 rich materials in Mr. Howard's posses- 

 sion. It was not until just previous to 

 my departure that Mr. Howard incident- 

 ally remarked that he had a number of 

 very old specimens in a separate packet, 

 and thought that it might be worth while 

 for him to fetch them for me to look at. 

 You may judge of my enthusiasm when, 

 upon turning over the sheets, I suddenly 

 looked upon one of the original speci- 

 mens from which Mr. Weddell had drawn 

 up his description of Cinchona Calisaya. 

 It was exactly the plant which I had 

 taken it to be, and corresponded with 

 not more than three or four of the entire 

 collection of specimens so named at Kew. 

 I now take this occasion of publishing 

 the emphatic statement that the plant 

 which has been called Cinchona Cali- 

 saya, var. Josephiana has been enorm- 

 ously cultivated and distributed to her- 

 baria under the name of Cinchona Cali- 

 saya. If the plant were in reality a 

 variety of the species to which it is ac- 

 credited, the error would be less grave, 

 but it is in all its essential characters, 

 and particularly in its economic aspects, 

 as distinct from Cinchona Calisaya as it 

 well could be. In studying the com- 

 mercial features of Cinchona, I received 

 much valuable assistance from Mr. A. C 

 Meyjes, the assistant editor of The 



