42 VARIETIES OF C. CALISAYA. Chap. II. 



botanist and intrepid explorer science is indebted, to no small 

 extent, for the present state of our knowledge of the chin- 

 chona genus. 



The C. Calisaya species has been divided by Dr. Weddell 

 into two varieties, namely, a vera and /3 Josephiana. The 

 former, when growing under favourable circumstances, is a tall 

 tree, often larger round than twice a man's girth, with its 

 leafy head rising above all the other trees of the forest. The 

 leaves are oblong or lanceolate-obovate, pitted in the axils of 

 the veins, with a shining green surface, and reddish veins. 

 The flowers, which hang in large panicles, are a rosy-white 

 colour, with laciniae rose-colour, and bordered by marginal 

 white hau-s. The capsule is smooth, and about twice as long 

 as broad. This tree grows on declivities, and steep rugged 

 places of the mountains, from 4900 to 5900 feet above the 

 sea, in the forests of Enquisivi, Capaulican, ApoUobamba, and 

 Larecaja in Bolivia, and of Caravaya in Peru. The trunk 

 may be kno^^Ti by the periderm of the bark, sometimes of a 

 greyish- white, sometimes brown or blackish, being always 

 marked by longitudinal ridges or cracks, a characteristic 

 remarked of no other tree of these forests, excepting one or 

 two of the same famdy. The taste is strongly bitter, which 

 is apparent directly the tip of the tongue touches it, and, 

 when the exterior receives a cut, a yellow gummy resinous 

 matter exudes from it. The bark comes off with great ease, 

 like peeliag a mushroom, while, in the iaferior kinds, and 

 above all in the false chinchonas, it strips transversely, and 

 \Adth much gi-eater difficulty, A good tree yields 150 to 175 

 pounds of dried bark. 



The other variety of C. Calisaya, called ychu eascarilla, or 

 cascarilla del imjonal, by the natives, was named Jbsep/w'awa by 

 Dr. Weddell after the unfortunate French botanist Joseph de 

 Jussieu. It is a shrub, not attaining a greater height than six 

 and a half to ten feet, and gi-omng on open grassy slopes, at 



