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CINCHONA PLANTING IN JAMAICA.* 



The history of Cinchona culture in the West Indies is thus succinctly 

 stated in the report of the present government botanist, Mr. E. Thom- 

 soli, for the year 1869: 



The first attempt to introduce the Cinchona cultivation into Jamaica, though in the 

 main unsuccessful, is instructive. In 1860, when the Indian government commissioned 

 an expedition to proceed to Peru for the purpose of collecting plants and seeds of vari- 

 ous species of Cinchoiui, for the introduction of their cultivation into that country, the 

 secretary of state for India authorized the collectors to transmit simultaneously seeds 

 to Jamaica. Accordingly a large number of the seeds of C. succiruhra and C. micrantka 

 arrived at the end of that year. Mr. Wilson, my predecessor, succeeded in rearing some 

 four hundred plants by the spring of the following year. In November (1861) several 

 of the plants were set out at Cold Spring, (near Newcastle,) and in the following year 

 a few more. One of them is now twenty-three feet high, with the stem near tlie ground 

 two feet in circumference, and one or two others are eighteen to twenty feet high. 

 About one hundred plants of C. micraniha were also sent, and kept here in pots a year 

 or more, and thence again brought back to Bath, to the number of sixty, in August, 

 1862, which, together with the plants of C. succmibra then at Bath, numbered at 

 least two hundred. At this time Mr. Wilson had, by the sanction of the government, 

 selected and prepared a site for a plantation on a spur of the Blue Mountains above 

 Bath, and the same wsis planted to the extent of three aci-es in October of that year. 

 This site proved unfortunate, inasmuch as the soil, a tenacious clay, was opposed to the 

 nature of the plant. Besides, the site was too low — perhaps under three thousand 

 feet — for their perfect development. The consequence was that they soon perished, 

 except six or eight that were transplanted to Cold Spring. While the aforesaid plants 

 in pots lay at Cold Spring, some were procured by coffee planters ; hence at Windsor 

 coffee plantation there are ten fine trees, sixteen to twenty feet high, one of which I had 

 the satisfaction, a few weeks ago, of seeing in perfect blossom. 



The subsequent progress of this important enterprise is thus detailed 

 in the official report of Mr. Thomson for 1870 : 



The progress of the forty acres of Cinchonas planted here the end of the year 1868 

 continues highly satisfactory. The tallest plant of C. officinalis is eleven feet, of C. 

 succiruhra nine feet, and of the other species eight to nine feet. The circumference of 

 the stems near the ground of all the species except C. officinalis, which is of more slen- 

 der habit, is from ten to twelve inches— double -what they were twelve mouths ago. I 

 speak of the finest specimens on the plantations, but all the others have made propor- 

 tionate progress. The diameter of the branches from side to side in some of the best 

 plants is over six feet. In my report for 1869 I observed that these plants had with- 

 stood the severe drought, w^hich lasted nearly five months, in the most satisfactory 

 manner. I have now to announce that the opposite extreme of wet weather has pre- 

 vailed in the past year. From the beginning of August till the end of the year it 

 rained on an average four days a week. I regret that I was not in a position to keep 

 a record of the rain-fall, together with other meteorological observations of the past 

 seasons, owing to my only occupying the new plantation-house near the end of Sep- 

 tember. 



By way, however, of indicating the excessive rain-fall experienced in these months, 

 I would remark that the extraordinary faU of twenty-four inches occurred in thirty 

 hours on the 17th and 18th November. 



I have good reason to believe from this and other isolated measurements that during 

 the five months above referred to the rain-fall must have considerably exceeded one 

 hundred and fifty inches. Frequently recurring with the rain-fall violent winds pre- 

 vailed, which in these higher altitudes almost approach to a hurricane, but from which 

 the plants have sustained very little injury. The incessant rains, however, have caused 

 several ugly laud slips, sometimes forming gullies to a depth of about twelve feet, 

 cutting across roads, thereby necessitating the alteration of their course to the extent 

 of nearly a mile. The total damage done to the plantations in this way, and by the 

 consequent rolling of huge stones and roots down the steisp mountain slopes, has resulted 

 in the loss of about five hundred to six hundred fine trees. When, however, it is borne 

 in mind that tliis has been an exceptionally rainy year and that the land is steep in 

 some places and newly under cultivation from a state of nature — the surface denuded, 

 the forest roots decaying, and the soil loosened— the powerful action of tropical rains 

 may be easily conceived, and the extent of injury must be considered as under these 

 circumstances trivial. The plants have thus passed satisfactorily the ordeal of two 



*k report of a visit to the Cinchona plantations in Januiica, West Indies, March, 1871, 

 by C. C. Parry, botanist Agricultural Department, attached to San Domingo Commission. 



