= 
Mox Kee 
ON THE CASCARILLAS OF 
times involved those who pursued it in 
Doubtless, a revival 
prove greatly advantageous to that pro- 
vince, and a constant supply in the market 
might thus be ensured, particularly if go- 
vernment, by instituting and enforcing 
such precautionary laws as have existed for 
upwards of a century in Loxa, would pre- 
vent the unprincipled adulteration of this 
uable article by the petty collectors. A 
little circumspection on the part of the Cas- 
carillero would prevent injury to the Cin- 
chona trees, the final extirpation of which 
has been prognosticated by those indi- 
viduals who are ignorant of the nature of 
the tree.! It is only needful to take the 
precaution of cutting down the stem close 
to the root to insure its springing up again. 
| In the mild districts, as about Cuchero, 
! Ulloa (see Notic. Secret. p. 572) thought that 
ne, in hi 
entertains the same fear, 
grounds, if the neighbourhood of Lo alene 
d ; for there they pursue a different method 
of obtaining the bark than in the province of Hua- 
nuco, baring the trunk as it stands instead of felling 
it. In all such cases, decay spreads in the tropical 
oods with incredible rapidity, and myriads of i 
sects, which lodge in the dead trunk, accomplish 
speed 1 th i 1 root 
xa were 
So great is the vital power in most tropical trees, that, 
unless every unfavorable cause seems leagued against 
w 
the vegetation in these countries were not more 
: n in the North, it must soon yield to the 
disproportionately greater causes of decay. The 
burned wood, in which the soil has been so heated 
that it is impossible for several days to walk there, 
speedily rea 
Re mnd with such delicate plants as might 
supposed incapable resuscitation after 
undergoing this literally fiery ordeal. Thus have I 
seen the most el idee, the Till anda 
he Tillandsias, 
ia ( M. bicolor, Fl. Peruv.), grow- 
Ing on the ground, near Pampayuco, in large clumps, 
ena E Y "S as c xw H t. and clothi 
the very soil over which the forest-fires had re- 
tiy passed. 
247 
CUCHERO AND HUANUCO. 
this vegetative process takes place so ra- 
pidly that, in six years, the young stems 
may be felled again; while in the colder 
rezion of Puna and the Ceja forests, 
where the most powerful Cinchona grows, 
twenty years are required. 
The Peruvians, though much visited by 
Endemic Tertian, are strongly prejudiced 
against the use of bark; and while its vir- 
tues were known in Europe, and appre- 
ciated even by the Indians, who dilated on 
them to Condamine, the white people at 
Quito, as well as those who were natives of 
the country, aver, that it is only in the 
colder northern regions that the exhibition 
of Cinchona bark can be useful. ey 
class it among the heating kind of remedies 
(Muy calientes), and obstinately persist 
in an opinion derived, perhaps, from the 
old Arabic physicians, who, in Spain and 
Portugal, divided all medicines, food, and 
drinks, into the cold and hot kinds. Here, 
where “ inflammation of the blood” is emi- 
nently dreaded, and the patient applies 
himself to thin his coagulated juices by all 
possible methods, it cannot be supposed 
that bark finds much favour, when, even in 
Europe, the admixture of Epsom salts is 
sometimes needful to correct the obstruc- 
tions to which its injudicious use has given 
is 
m" 
e. 
I may state, that having been severely 
attacked with Tertian fever, when at a dis- 
privations incidental on a residence for 
eight months in the forest, I cured myself, 
at three different intervals, 
plication of this unadulterated remedy, 
salts; and never could 
without a feeling of gratitude and pleasure, 
the beneficent Cinchonas, whose nobl 
reddish flowers appear in January, in such 
quantities as to render the tops of the trees — 
conspicuous from a great distance. ae 
by the ap- — 
* ux 
