Fan. 25, 1883] 
NATURE 
287 
about man having excavated sea-worn caves, and had 
expressed an opinion about the power of the sea of which 
he would then feelingly admit that he had been profoundly 
ignorant. 
The pamphlet here noticed did not in itself deserve 
consideration in these columns. We have made use of it 
as a type of publication painfully frequent in the literature 
of science. If in exposing its characteristics we deter any 
rash and immature aspirant for fame from at once rushing 
before the world with what he conceives to be his dis- 
coveries, we shall have done a service at once to him and 
to science. 
CINCHONA PLANTING 
A Handbook of Cinchona Culture. By Karel Wessel van 
Gorkom. ‘Translated by Benjamin Daydon Jackson, 
Sec.L.S. (London: Triibner, 1883.) 
Die Chinarinden in Pharmakognostischer Hinsicht 
dargestellt, Von F. A. Fliickiger. (Berlin: R. Gaertner, 
1883.) 
HE rapid extension of cinchona planting in India, 
Ceylon, and Jamaica will make a translation of Van 
Gorkom’s account of the methods of cultivation and 
harvesting pursued by him, as Director of the cinchona 
plantations belonging to the Dutch Government in Java, 
useful to many who propose to turn their attention to this 
profitable industry. At present intending planters in 
British possessions have had little beyond Dr. King’s 
Manual of Cinchona Cultivation (1876) to serve as a guide. 
In Ceylon the planting community includes many men of 
first-rate ability, and the singularly energetic journalism 
of the island speedily ventilates for the common good any 
fresh idea or point of practice in planting procedure. 
Indian planters share the benefit of this, while Jamaica 
has the advantage of possessing in Mr. Morris, a director 
of its botanical department, who has carried to the West 
Indies an intimate knowledge of all that is being done 
in Ceylon. It is not very probable that those who are 
at present occupied in cinchona enterprise in British 
possessions will glean much from Van Gorkom’s book. 
Still such a manual will not be without its use for those 
who have everything to learn about the matter, and, as 
will be seen, it cannot fail to be interesting to those 
who watch from an independent point of view the 
economics of the subject. 
The book is handsomely printed and got up—too hand- 
somely, indeed, for workmanlike use, for which its size, 
that of a small folio, seems particularly unsuited. We 
must too make a serious protest as to the style of the 
translation, which, we think, cannot be considered toler- 
able, even with every allowance for “seeming inele- 
gancies’’ which Mr. Jackson pleads for in his preface. 
Take, as a sample, the first sentence which caught 
our eye :— 
“Tf we trust that this excellent opportunity for fruitful 
comparisons shall lead to unfettered judgment, still more 
do we look for, from the impressions received and the 
enlarged field of view, the scientific work carried on, 
which has so long been in hand, and most certainly with 
great completeness and undisputed knowledge of material, 
will indicate our present standpoint in the domain of 
quinology ” (p. 264). 
* Of T. C. Owen’s Cinchona Planter’s Manual, published at Colombo, we 
know nothing beyond the name. 
Now it is quite certain that this is not English, and we 
have some doubts whether it really conveys any meaning 
at all. But at any rate we would ask what is the use of 
translating in this way a work the purpose of which is not 
literary but essentially utilitarian. There seems, in fact, 
to be a deep-rooted superstition about the value of so- 
called fidelity in translating books of mere information. 
In rendering a foreign language as a philological under- 
taking, it is often desirable to sacrifice, to some extent, 
style and form, in order to convey as nearly as may be, 
the exact force of each word and of each turn of expres- 
sion. But where, as in a technical treatise, it is only the 
context we care about, it is exasperating to find the 
translator exhibiting a would-be scholarly care over the 
exact reproduction of the vehicle. All we want him to do 
is to master the meaning and give it to us in clear, 
straightforward English. 
Having said so much by way of criticism we may indi- 
cate a few points which we think will be interesting even 
to some who are not colonial readers of NATURE. 
A hundred of the three hundred pages of which the 
volume consists is given up to historical matter regarding 
the history of Czzchonaand the development of its culture 
in Java and in British possessions. All this is an oft told 
tale, and contains little that will not be found in Mr. 
Markham’s Peruvian Bark (reviewed in NATURE, vol. 
xxiii, pp. 189-191). An exception must be made, however, 
as to the interesting account of the commencement of 
cinchona cultivation in Bolivia. The existence of this 
enterprise was known, but we have not met with any 
previous account of it. The Dutch Consul-General 
reported to his Government :— 
“The great event in the agricultural region of Bolivia 
is the planting of the Bolivian cinchona forests, of which 
an earnest beginning was made in 1878. . . . The river 
Mapiti, in the province of Larecaja, department La Paz, 
has been the centre of the movement, and already the 
young trees of two years’ growth, may be reckoned at 
from four to five hundred thousand” (p. 17). 
Doubt is, however, expressed whether the planting will 
be maintained in the face of labour difficulties and a pos- 
sible fall of prices in consequence of increasing exports 
from the East Indies. 
Modern cinchona enterprise in Java has aimed at the 
production of barks rich in quinine. With the lucky 
purchase from Mr. Ledger in 1865 of a packet of seeds of 
the now well-known Czxchona Ledgeriana, the Dutch 
“cinchona culture of the future has entered upon an 
entirely new phase” (p. 77). About 20,000 of the seeds 
germinated in Java, and first and last Mr. Ledger received 
about 24/. from the Dutch Government, and “was there- 
with well content’’ (p. 91). Fortunately the greater part 
of the seed originally imported was purchased by a well- 
known Indian planter, Mr. Money, and some of it seems 
by private channels to have found its way to the Govern- 
ment plantations in Sikkim. The Dutch having got this 
valuable kind seem to have managed it with extraordinary 
intelligence and skill. Men like De Vrij, Moens, and 
Van Gorkom were well-trained European scientific men 
and competent chemists. Their object was by continuous 
selection, controlled by repeated analyses of barle made 
on the spot to obtain races of Cizchona Ledgeriana richer 
and richer in quinine, and it is a matter of genera] 
