18 MAGNOLIACEJE. 



But although the straits of Magellan were several times visited 

 about this period, it is certain that no regular communication between 

 that remote region and Europe existed either then or subsequently ; 

 and we may reasonably conclude that Winter's Bark became a drug of 

 great rarity, and known to but few persons. It thus happened that, 

 notwithstanding most obvious differences, the Canella alba of the West 

 Indies, and another bark of which we shall speak further on, having 

 been- found to possess the pungency of Winter's Bark, were (owing to 

 the scarcity of the latter) substituted for it, until at length the peculiar 

 characters of the original drug came to be entirely forgotten. 



The tree was figured by Sloane in 1693, from a specimen (still 

 extant in the British Museum) brought from Magellan's Straits by 

 Handisyd, a ship's surgeon, who had experienced its utility in treating 

 scurvy. 



Feuill^e,^ a French botanist, found the Winter's Bark- tree in Chili 

 (1709-11), and figured it as Boigue cinnamomifera. It was, however, 

 Forster," the botanist of Cook's second expedition round the world, who 

 first described the tree accurately, and named it Drimys Winteri. He 

 met with it in 1773 in Magellan's Straits, and on the eastern coasts of 

 Tierra del Fuego, where it grows abundantly, forming an evergreen 

 tree of 40 feet, while on the western shores it is but a shrub of 10 feet 

 high. Specimens have been collected in these and adjacent localities 

 by many subsequent botanists, among others by Dr. J. D. Hooker, who 

 states that about Cape Horn the tree occurs from the sea-level to an 

 elevation of 1000 feet. 



Although the bark of DHniys was never imported as an article of 

 trade from Magellan's Straits, fit has in recent times been occasionally 

 brought into the market from other parts of South America, where 

 it is in very general use. Yet so little are drug dealers acquainted with 

 it, that its true name and origin have seldom been recognized.' 



Description — We have examined specimens of true Winter's Bark 

 from the Straits of Magellan, Chili, Peru, New Granada, and Mexico, 

 and find in each the same general characters. The bark is in quills or 

 channelled pieces, often crooked, twisted or bent backwards, generally 

 only a few inches in length. It is most extremely thick (yV to fV of 

 an inch) and appears to have shrunk very much in drying, bark a 

 quarter of an inch thick having sometimes rolled itself into a tube only 

 three times as much in external diameter. Young pieces have an ashy- 

 grey suberous coat beset with lichens. In older bark, the outer coat is 

 sometimes whitish and silvery, but more often of a dark rusty brown, 

 which is the colour of the internal substance, as well as of the surface 

 next the wood. The inner side of the bark is strongly characterized by 

 very rough striae, or, as seen under a lens, by small short and sharp 

 longitudinal ridges, with occasional fissures indicative of great con- 

 traction of the inner layer in drying. In a piece broken or cut trans- 

 versely, it is easy to perceive that the ridges in question are the ends of 

 rays of white liber which diverge towards the circumference in radiate 



' Joum. des ohservcUions physiques, &c. ^ We liave seen it offered in a drug sale at 



IV. 1714. 10, pi. 6. one time as " Pepper Bark," at another as 



2 C/uiracteres Oenerum Plantarum, 1775. ''Cinchona." Even Mutis thought it a Cin- 



42. chona, and called it " Kinkina urens" ! 



