60 ■ AMERICAN PLANTS IN INDIA. Chap. IV. 



CHAPTEE IV. 



INTRODUCTION OF CHINCHONA-PLANTS INTO INDIA. 



PRELIMINARY ARRANGEMENTS. 



The distribution of valuable products of the vegetable king- 

 dom amongst the nations of tlie eartb — their introduction 

 from countries where they are indigenous into distant lands 

 with suitable soils and climates — is one of the greatest benefits 

 that civilization has conferred upon mankind. Such mea- 

 sures ensure immediate material increase of comfort and 

 profit, while their effects are more durable than the proudest 

 monuments of engineering skill. With all their shortcomings, 

 the Spaniards can point to vast plains covered with wheat 

 and barley, to valleys waving with sugar-cane, and to hill- 

 slopes enriched by vineyards and coffee-plantations, as the 

 fruits of their conquest of South America. On the oth^r 

 hand, India owes to America the aloes which line the roads in 

 Mysore, the delicious anonas, the arnotto-tree, the sumach, the 

 capsicums so extensively used in native curries, the pimento, 

 .the papaw, the cassava which now forms the staple food of 

 the people of Travancore, the potato, tobacco, Indian corn, 

 pine-apples, American cotton, and lastly the chinchona : while 

 the slopes of the Himalayas are enriched by tea-plantations, 

 and the hills of Southern India are covered with rows of 

 coffee-trees. 



It is by thus adding to the sources of Indian wealth that 

 England will best discharge the immense responsibility she 

 has incurred by the conquest of India, so far as the material 

 interests of that vast empire are concerned. Thus too will she 

 leave behind her by far the most durable monument of the 



