DRUGS. 03 



made to that gentleman for the enormous number of 

 1,500,000." 



This indicated not only the great interest taken in the 

 experiment at that early stage, but also proved that the 

 plants in their new home lost little or nothing of their 

 valuable properties, an incentive to private planters to em- 

 bark in their cultivation. During the following year, 1864, 

 plants were propagated in the Nilghiris at the rate of 

 30,000 to 40,000 per month ; while in Ceylon a stock of 

 190,000 plants had been obtained, and applications received 

 for 28,500 plants. 



In the meantime, plantations had also been established 

 in some of the colonies; and in Jamaica 400 plants had 

 been planted out, and were reported as growing satisfac- 

 torily. 



In 1865 seeds of Cinchona officinalis, which furnishes 

 the pale cinchona or crown bark, were ripened in Ceylon 

 and were distributed to Jamaica, Trinidad, Mauritius, Cape 

 of Good Hope, Queensland, and other places ; while in 

 India, in the Nilghiris, at Calcutta, and at Darjeeling the 

 plantations were immensely extended. 



In 1867 the plantations in Jamaica contained 30,000 

 plants; and three years later namely, in 1870 Sir 

 Joseph Hooker reported as follows : " The success of the 

 cinchona experiment is now fully established in the Sikkim 

 Himalaya, the Nilghiris, Khasia Mountains (East Bengal), 

 Ceylon, and Jamaica. The bark from the first-named 

 localities has commanded a price equal to the Peruvian 

 in the English market, nineteen cases of red bark from Dar- 

 jeeling having been bought by Messrs. Howard and Sons 

 for Is. 9d. per pound, which these gentlemen inform me is 

 what South American bark of the same age would have 

 fetched. No less than a ton of prepared bark has been sent 

 to London from Ceylon, the produce of seeds sent to Dr. 

 Thwaites from Kew in 1861." 



