Observations and Experiments on Peruvian Bark. 31 
of dried specimens of the genus cinchona in his possession, 
collected in 1805, both near Loxa and Santa Fe, he finds 
many specimens which are not mentioned in the works of 
any Spanish botanist. 
r. Paris, in his valuable Pharmacologia, justly remarks, 
that notwithstanding the labors of the Spanish botani 
history of this important genus is still involved in considera- 
ble perplexity; and owing to the mixture of the barks of 
several species, and their importation into Europe under one 
common name, it is extremely difficult to reconcile the con- 
tradictory opinions which exist upon this subject. Under 
. the trivial name officinalis, Linnzus confounded no less 
than four distinct species of cinchona; and under the same 
denomination, the British Pharmacopeeias for a long period 
placed as varieties, the three barks known in the shops: this 
error indeed is still maintained in the Dublin Pharmacopeeia, 
but the London and Edinburgh colleges, have at length 
adopted the arrangement of Mutis, a celebrated botanist 
genus cinchona, of not less than twenty five species into 
three varieties, and leaving it entirely to the discretion of the 
apothecary, to give him any species, of a color correspondent 
to that ordered. Independent of the great insufficiency of 
these terms to distinguish’the numerous species, the color of 
the powder, is one of the most uncertain and inaccurate 
