272 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



the dye is made, or we should use it ourselves for our ponchos and 

 bayetas, and not let foreigners take away so much of it." There 

 is to this day the same repugnance to using the bark as a febri- 

 fuge as Huinboldt remarked sixty years ago, and as exists also in 

 New Granada, where Cedron and various other substances are 

 preferred to Quina. I think I can explain this repugnance. The 

 inhabitants of South America, although few of them have heard 

 of Dr. Cullen, have a theory which refers all diseases to the 

 influence of either heat or cold, and (by what seems to them a 

 simple process of reasoning) their remedies to agents of the 

 opposite complexion ; thus, if an ailment have been brought on 

 by "calor," it must be cured with "frescos"; but if by "frio," 

 with "calidos." Confounding cause and effect, they suppose all 

 fever to proceed from " calor/' Now they consider the cascarilla 

 a terribly strong " calido," and justly ; so, by their theory (which 

 is the reverse of Hahnemann's), its use could only aggravate the 

 symptoms of fever. . . . 



Even at Guayaquil there is such a general disinclination to the 

 use of quinine that, when the physicians there have occasion to 

 prescribe it, they indicate it by the conventional term " alcaloide 

 vejetal," which all the apothecaries understand to mean "sulphate 

 of quinine," while the patient is kept in happy ignorance that he 

 is taking that deadly substance. 



The lowest site of the Red Bark at Limon is at an elevation of 

 2450 feet above the sea, where the Chasuan receives the rivulet 

 already mentioned as running below our hut. It is precisely the 

 point where the track from Ventanas leaves the Chasuan (along 

 whose margin it had run thus far, with a gentle ascent from the 

 plain) and begins to ascend the steep cuesta separating the 

 Chasuan from its tributary, the ascent being 350 feet in the first 

 500 yards ; so that where the real ascent of the Andes begins there 

 also begins the Red Bark. At San Antonio, however, I saw a 

 tree at a height of no more than 2300 feet ; and, if I might believe 

 my informants, trees of immense size have been cut down at 

 points whose height I estimate at barely over 2000 feet. Follow- 

 ing the track leading to Guarancla, the last Bark trees growing by 

 the roadside are at a height of 3680 feet ; but leaving the track, 

 and following the hill-side on the left bank of the Limon, there are 

 Bark trees scattered about for a distance of a league, and up to a 

 height of near 4500 feet. On the opposite ridge, or that separating 

 the Limon from the Chasuan, there are also several trees ascend- 

 ing to a still greater elevation, or nearly to 5000 feet ; but I did 

 not take the barometer to these latter, which were all sterile, in 

 consequence of growing in lofty forest. 



The cascarilleros do not usually go in quest of Bark trees 

 before August, there being generally less fog in that and the 

 following month than at any other period of the year. The 



