

WASTEFUL MODE OF COLLECTION. 341 



The rarity of a drug or its total disappearence is due in some 1867. 

 cases to an improvident and ruinous method of collection. improvident 

 Thus, a century ago there was still found in commerce Loxa collection, 

 bark that had been stripped from tree-trunks of no mean 

 dimensions, and some such bark which I have seen has a 

 thickness of a quarter of an inch and is rich in alkaloids. At 

 the present day, old trees yielding this species of bark are 

 unknown, all the Loxa bark of modern commerce being derived 

 from shrubs, which are stripped even to their smallest twigs. 1 

 The same fate seems likely to fall (if it has not already done 

 so) on the red bark of Ecuador, the thick or tabla form of 

 which, derived from the trunks of old trees, is becoming more 

 and more rare. 



Mr. Spruce, who in 1859 visited the forest of Azuay in the Red bark. 

 Quitenian Andes in order to examine the species of cinchona 

 which occur there, found that the red bark was in process ~of 

 rapid extermination, prostrate naked trunks, in some places 

 surrounded by saplings, being the only remnants which he met 

 with of this valuable species. The slopes of Chimborazo, which 

 the same traveller visited in the succeeding year, offered similar 

 evidence of an improvident and destructive method of bark- 

 collecting, the very roots of the trees having been in many 

 cases dug out and stripped of their bark. This valuable cinchona 

 is, however, now so well established in India (the number of 

 trees on the Neilgherry Hills alone amounting in May 1866 

 to 297,465,) 2 that there is no danger of an utter failure of red 

 bark, at all events of such as may be obtained from young 

 wood. 



The advanced price of scammony already mentioned, presents Causes of 

 an instance in which the supply of a drug is diminished by the scarclt y- 

 introduction of a more profitable object of commerce. This 

 cause, combined with the clearing of forests, has operated still 

 more strongly in the case of some drugs the demand for which 

 has been small and uncertain. Thus it has beerl more advan- 



1 Cross, Report on Expedition to Procure Seeds of Cinchona condaminea in ' 

 the Forests of Loxa, November 1861. 



2 Parliamentary Return, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 

 18th June 1866. 



