CINCHONACEJE. 



in the Nova Genera and Species Plantarum, vol. iii. p. 399., is very 

 unsatisfactory. All the errors and misconceptions of the Santa Fe 

 Botanists have been adopted, and the whole synonymy is one mass of 

 confusion. In his valuable account of the Cinchona forests of South 

 America, Baron Humboldt has given an elaborate account of the dis- 

 covery of the bark, and of the squabbles in which the Spanish Botanists 

 have engaged upon that subject ; but this distinguished traveller, who 

 lived some time in Santa Fe, in the house of Don Jose Celestino Mutis 

 who was one of the principal disputants, was not unnaturally biassed 

 in his opinions by that officer, and consequently fell into several errors. 

 He was led to believe that the Carthagena barks were equal to those 

 of Peru, an error which is now well known to all pharmaceutical 

 writers. While he exposed some of the errors of his. predecessors 

 regarding the Botanical synonymy of the Cinchona trees he fell into 

 others, by believing that the Peruvian and New Grenada species were 

 identical ; this led him to say that C. nitida of the Fl. Peruviana is the 

 same as C. lancifolia of Mutis or the Cascarilla naranjada of Santa Fe, 

 a very serious mistake considering the different qualities of their barks. 

 He was also induced to place too much confidence in the assertions of 

 Don Francisco Antonio Zea, the friend of Mutis, who had arrived at the 

 singular conclusion that C. rosea of the Fl. Peruv. the Cascarillo pardo, 

 which is not a Cinchona at all, is only a variety of the C. lancifolia 

 of Mutis. The effect of this has been to diminish very much the 

 value of the critical part of Baron Humboldt's treatise. 



No one has collected information concerning the genus Cinchona 

 with more zeal and perseverance than my friend Aylmer Bourke Lam- 

 bert, Esq., as is attested by his " Description of the genus Cinchona " 

 published in 1797, with 13 plates ; by his " Illustration of the genus 

 Cinchona" published in 1821, and by his valuable collection of dried 

 specimens obtained from the authors of the Flora Peruviana at a con- 

 siderable cost. It will be seen in the following remarks how largely I 

 have profited by this gentleman's materials. Unfortunately Mr. Lam- 

 bert, like Baron Humboldt, formed an erroneous estimate of the value 

 of information obtained from Zea, and thus has been led into mis- 

 takes which would otherwise have been avoided. 



Messrs. Homer and Schultes in the 5th volume of their Systema 

 Vegetabilium have collected the information contained in the Flora 

 Peruviana, the Quinologia, and the writings of Humboldt and Bon- 

 pland, but with so little skill that their work does not deserve to be 

 quoted. For example they combine C. lancifolia of Mutis, with 

 C. nitida and lanceolata of the Flora Peruviana, which are all totally 

 different ; and they separate C. purpurea of the Flora Peruviana from 

 C.pubescens of Vahl, making the latter a variety of C. cordifolia, although 

 the two former are identical and the latter a distinct species. And 

 again they mix C. hirsuta with C. cordifolia, which is much the same 

 thing as. saying that Viburnum Tinas and V. Lantana are varieties of 

 each other. 



M. De Candolle in his great work has treated of the genus Cinchona, 

 and has been able from the examination of specimens to correct some 

 errors and to arrange the species much better than any modern syste- 

 matist. But the species did not occupy his attention very particularly, 

 and like almost every body else he has been misled by the assertions of 

 Messrs. Mutis and Zea. 



Many very valuable remarks upon the Cinchonas of Peru have been 



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