344 Falconer aiid his Labours in India 



rants, and gooseberries. They were naturalised in the Himma- 

 layahs, and formed a most vakiable addition to the fruit trees 

 which he had obtained in his journeys in Cashmere. 



The cultivation of cinchona in India is a matter almost of 

 national importance, for in the year 1857 the annual cost of 

 quinine to the Government was ;^i 2,000, and, according to an 

 estimate made by Mr Markham, the expenditure on this medicine 

 by the Government druggists amounted in 1857 to ^54,520, 

 and to ^^40,696 in 1858-9. * On the question of the share that 

 Dr Falconer had in the successful introduction of this most 

 valuable plant into India, we are at issue with his biographer. 

 Dr Falconer, he writes, was instrumental in introducing the culti- 

 vation of the cinchona bark into our Indian Empire, t and he 

 quotes in proof a paper on the quinine — yielding cinchonas, and 

 their introduction into India, written by Dr Falconer in February 

 1852, and the fact that he had himself seen plants of Cinchona 

 calisaya in the Botanic Garden at Calcutta in 1853. 



" Dr Falconer was not at the time cognisant of Weddell's accurate determina- 

 tion of the species of cinchona, but he recommended a trial of them in India, 

 and indicated the hilly regions in Bengal and the Neilgherries in Southern India 

 as the most promising situations for experimental nurseries. The subject was 

 taken up some years afterwards, the bark -yielding cinchonas were then intro- 

 duced from South America, and they are now thriving and promising to be a 

 new source of wealth in India. "J 



This claim to the merit of Dr Falconer's having been instrumental 

 in the cultivation of so valuable a tree in India cannot be enter- 

 tained for a moment. It is undoubtedly true that in 1853 there 

 were cinchona plants in the garden at Calcutta, but all mention 

 of their subsequent fate and of the way by which they arrived in 

 India is omitted, and the reader is left to infer that the present 

 flourishing state of the cinchona plantations is due to Dr Falconer. 

 The six plants in question " were contributed by the Horticultural 

 Societies of Edinburgh and London, raised by seeds sent home by 

 Dr Weddell from Bolivia, were taken to Calcutta by Mr Fortune ; 

 they arrived in good order, but all died through gross carelessness 

 in their removal to Darjeeling."|| So far, then, from being instru- 

 mental in introducing them, Dr Falconer is responsible only for 

 their neglect. Nor, indeed, did the idea that they might be suc- 



* Markhan, Travels in Peru and India, 11.64. 



+ I5iographical Sketch, xl. J Ihiii., xxxix. 



II Markliani's 'I'ravels in Pitu and India, p. 63. 



