Chap. I. HESEARCHES OF JUSSIEU. 9 



served these plants for more than eight months. " Thus," he 

 says, " I lost them after all the care I had taken durmg a 

 voyage of more than twelve hundred leagues."* This was 

 the jfirst attempt to transport ehinchona-plants from their 

 native forests. 



Condamine described the quinquina-tree of Loxa in the 

 * M^mones de I'xVcaddmie ;'^ he was the first man of science 

 who examined and described this important plant; and in 

 1742 Linnaeus established the genus Chinchona, in honour 

 of the Countess Ana of Chinchon. He, however, only knew 

 of two species, that of Loxa, which was named C. officinalis, 

 and the C. Caribcea, since degraded to the medicinally 

 worthless genus of Exostemmas. 



Joseph de Jussieu, whose name is associated with that of 

 La Condamine in the first examination of the chinchona-trees 

 of Loxa, continued his researches in South America after the 

 departure of his associate. He penetrated on foot into the 

 province of Canelos, the scene of Gonzalo Pizarro's wonder- 

 ful achievements and terrible suiferings ; he visited Lima 

 with M. Godin ; he travelled over Upper Peru as far as the 

 forests of Santa Cruz de la Sierra ; and he was the first 

 botanist who examined and sent home specimens of the coca- 

 plant, the beloved narcotic of the Peruvian Indian. After 

 fifteen years of laborious work he was robbed of his large 

 collection of plants by a servant at Buenos Ayres, who 

 behoved that the boxes contained money. This loss had a 

 disastrous effect on poor Jussieu, who, in 1771, retm-ned to 

 France, deprived of reason, after an absence of thirty-four 

 years. Dr. Weddell has named the slu'ubby variety of C. 

 Calisaya in honour of this unfortunate botanist C. Josephiana. 



For many years the quinquina-tree of Loxa, the C offici- 

 nalis of Linnaeus, was the only species with which botanists 



* Voyage de Condamine, p. 31. " 1738, p. 226. 



