346 RUBIACE^. 



of Peru, whereby the monopoly of the district of Loxa was soon 

 broken up. 



Numerous and important quinological discoveries were subsequently 

 made by Mutis, or rather by his pupils Caldas, Zea, and Kestrepo/ as 

 well as on the other hand by Ruiz and Pavon, and their successors 

 Tafalla and Manzanilla. Mutis did not bring his labours to any definite 

 conclusion, and his extensive botanical collections and 5,000 coloured 

 drawings, were sent to Madrid only in 1817, and there remained in a 

 lamentable state of neglect. 



Some of his observations first appeared in print in 1793-94, under 

 the title of El Arcano de la Quina in the Diario, a local paper of 

 Santa Fe, and were reprinted at Madrid in 1828 by Don Manuel 

 Hernandez de Gregorio. The botanical descriptions of the cinchonas of 

 New Granada, forming the fourth part of the Arcano, remained for- 

 gotten and lost to science until rescued by Markham and published in 

 1867.^ The drawings belonging to the descriptions were photographed 

 and engraved a little later, and form part of Triana's Nouvelles Etudes 

 sur les Quinquinas, which appeared in 1870. 



The two Peruvian botanists succeeded somewhat better in securing 

 their results. Ruiz in 1792, in his Quinologia,^ and in 1801 conjointly 

 with Pavon in a supplement thereto, brought together a portion of their 

 important labours relating to cinchona. But an essential part called 

 Nueva Quinologia, written between 1821 and 1826, remained un- 

 published; and after an oblivion of over thirty years, it came by pur- 

 chase into the hands of Mr. John Eliot Howard, who published it, and 

 with rare liberality enriched it with 27 magnificent coloured plates, 

 mostly taken from the very specimens of Pavon lying in the herbarium 

 of Madrid. 



Between the pupils of Mutis on the one hand, and those of Ruiz and 

 Pavon on the other, there arose an acrimonious controversy regarding 

 their respective discoveries, which has been equitably summarized by 

 Triana in the work just mentioned. 



Production — The hardships of bark-collecting in the primeval 

 forests of South America are of the severest kind, and undergone only 

 by the half-civilized Indians and people of mixed race, in the pay of 

 speculators or companies located in the towns. Those who are engaged 

 in the business, especially the collectors themselves, are called Casca- 

 rilleros or Gascadores, from the Spanish word Cascara, bark. A major- 

 domo at the head of the collectors directs the proceedings of the several 

 bands in the forest itself, where provisions and afterwards the produce 

 are stowed away in huts of slight construction. 



Arrot in 1736, and Weddell and Karsten in our own day, have given 

 from personal observation a striking picture of these operations. 



The cascarillero having found his tree, has usually to free its stem 

 from the luxuriant climbing and parasitic plants with which it is en- 



1 ". . Mutis n'avait qu'une notion in- ^ Markham, Cliinchona Species of 2s ew 



exacte et confuse du genre Cinchona et de Oranada, Lend. 1867. 



ses vdritables caracteres ; c'est en definitive ^ Quinologia, 6 tratado de drhol de. la 



qu'aucune de ses esp^ces, dans le sens strict Quina, 6 Cascarilla, Madrid, 1792. 4°. 



du mot, n'a ^t^ reconnue ni decouverte par pp. 103. 



lui." — Triana, Nouv. Etudes, p. 8. * Supplemento a la Quinologia, Madrid, 



1801. 40. pp. 154. 



