452 Peruvian-baric Trees and their Transplantation. 



PERUVIAN-BARK TREES AND THEIR 



TRANSPLANTATION. 



BY BEKTHOLD SEEMANN, E.L.S., F.K.G.S. 



Many years "before the Irish famine William Cobbett pre- 

 dicted that calamity, and many years before the present cotton 

 distress, far-seeing minds foretold that catastrophe. Nothing 

 could be more sound than the principles upon which these 

 unheeded warnings were based — the uncertainty always at- 

 tendant on a single source of supply. Cobbett knew that 

 potatoes, like all other organisms, are subject to occasional 

 attacks of diseases and wide-spread epidemics; and that a 

 whole people, like the Irish, relying for their staple food upon 

 these roots, must sooner or later share the fate of the product 

 upon which they have placed their main dependence, and 

 with the fortunes of which they have intimately associated 

 themselves. It was the same with cotton. Far-seeing men 

 could perceive the political thunderstorm gathering in the 

 United States ; and knowing that all Lancashire, all England 

 — in fact, all the world — relied upon this one source of supply 

 for cotton, they denounced the recklessness of such improvi- 

 dence in the strongest terms, formed associations for obtaining 

 the raw material from other countries than the United States, 

 and in speech and print did all in their power to arouse 

 public attention. Yet as long as the mills were busy, and 

 millions of bales were coming in without interruption, no 

 notice was taken of their endeavours to stave off the fearful 

 doom to which our manufacturing population was drifting. 

 Now that the calamity has at length overtaken us, and 

 thousands upon thousands of pounds are spent in keeping 

 the workpeople from actual starvation, everybody remembers 

 hearing Cassandra's voice. If but a hundredth part of what 

 is now required to feed the hungry spinners had been devoted 

 to encouraging the growth of cotton in the various tropical 

 and subtropical possessions of Great Britain, Lancashire dis- 

 tress would never have been heard of, and manufacturers 

 would have gradually relied upon the produce of free labour 

 instead of paying a premium to slavery. 



Mankind is threatened by a third danger, which may prove 

 equally great, equally fatal in its consequences. Most men are 

 probably not aware of the vast benefits they owe to the dis- 

 covery of the Peruvian bark, the produce of various species of 

 CJi/inchona, and the alkaloids, quinine and chinchonine, em- 

 bedded in it. History takes no notice of the death of count- 

 less mediocrities from fever and ague, but fails not to record 

 that Alexander the Great died of the common remittent 



