and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— July, 1912. 85 



cians. At the close of 1877 it had not been 

 decided whether it was desirable to make 

 "quinetum " in the East Indies, and the dis- 

 cussion caused much discontent and strife. De 

 Vrij forced his belief in the potentialities of 

 C. succirubra in the production of "quinetum" 

 to the extent of proposing that Eydman should 

 be sent out as " chemist to the Government 

 plantations and manufacturer of 'quinetum.'" 

 When Eydman got out there he was found 

 suitable employment in the sugar industry— 

 Moens, who was on the spot as director, holding 

 different views to de Vrij ! The next stage came 

 in 1885, when the private cinchona planters re- 

 quested the Governor-General to ascertain the- 

 practicability of exporting the crude alkaloids 

 with the object of saving the expense of packing 

 and transporting the worthless fibre of the bark. 



EXPERIMENTS IN THE LABORATORY AT BANDOENG 

 RESULTED IN A PREPARATION CALLED "QUINIUM," 



containing 60 per cent alkaloids and differing 

 from "quinetum," in that the latter was put 

 forward as a substitute for quinine, whilst*] the 

 former was offered to manufacturers in place 

 of the bulky raw material. Samples were dis- 

 tributed to the quinine factories at Amsterdam, 

 Brunswick, Frankfort, Feuerbajh, near Stutt- 

 gart, and London, and the reports made indi- 

 cated that the venture was received with dis- 

 favour — the chief objections being that the 

 alkaloids were variable, that it was very un- 

 certain if bulk would correspond with sample, 

 that on the freight question it would be more 

 profitable with the freight so low, then, for 

 the manufacturer to import good bark than a 

 bad crude preparation, and that the manu- 

 facture of quinine from this resinous sub- 

 stance was not much easier than manufacturing 

 from the bark. Calculating on the quinine 

 basis on the Continent, then at 5d . per unit, it was 



FOUND THAT IHE COST OF THE BARK ITSELF 

 WOULD BE HIGHER THAN THE " QUINIUM " 



prepared from it, so that absolutely nothing was 

 left for the manufacturing processes in Java ! 



It is interesting to note that South America 

 once proposed to export an extract of the bark, 

 and the owner, unable to obtain his price for the 

 substance, sold it four or five years later 

 " without reserve." As far as the Java attempt 

 was concerned, it was not encouraging, and 

 no further experiments were then made. The 

 latest, however, is Van Leersum's process for 

 making alkaloid from fresh bark, one which 

 some planters hold up as a Damocletian sword 

 over tho heads of the European maker. Is 

 it ?— British and Colonial Druggist, May 31, 



MOSQUITOES AND KEROSENE. 



We live in an age of such rapid progress 

 that the scientific beliefs of one day are the 

 heresies of the next. We are prompted to say 

 this after reading a long and very interesting 

 paper, read by Surgeon-Captain F T Mc- 

 Cabe, m.d., at a recent meeting of the Royal 

 Asiatic Society in Calcutta on " Larvicides in 

 Action," in which he went most thoroughly into 

 the question of the best way of destroying the 

 larvae of the disease-bearing mosquito in all its 

 varieties. We have been led to believe that 

 treating all stagnant water, in which the mos- 

 quito breeds, with kerosene was a certain way 

 to get rid of the larvaee, which had to come to 

 the surface to breathe. The kerosene oil lying 

 on the surface prevented their doing this, and 

 the result was that they were suffocated to 

 death. Surgeon Captain McCabe very convin- 

 cingly demonstrated that this was not the case. 

 He showed his audience a glass jar in which was 

 water containing mosquito larvae which had 

 been liberally treated with kerosene oil, but in 

 which the larvae were as active as ever. Not only 

 did the kerosene not kill the mosquito larvae, 

 but it did kill almost instantaneously the water- 

 snail, a natural enemy of the mosquito larvae. 

 It was obvious that a so-called mosquito larvi- 

 cide which did not effect its purpose so far as 

 the mosquito was concerned, but did kill its 

 natural enemies, was of little use, so that Sur- 

 geon-Captain McCabe had to set out on a search 

 for something that did kill the mosquito larvae, 

 even if it did kill everything else in the water. 



Poisons, such as would also affect human 

 beings, were out of the question, so he tried the 

 various salts of likely metals, as also salts of 

 quinine and oil of eucalyptus. But all were un- 

 successful; the only result some had was to make 

 the larvae so voracious that they preyed upon 

 each other. Eventually, by some good fortune, 

 he hit upon chloride of lime. This in itself 

 was harmless; but mixed with kerosene it made 

 a compound that was deadly. Unfortunately, 

 its beneficent action is limited. It cau only be 

 applied to small pieces of water which do not 

 contain any fish or other useful denizens of the 

 water. For sinks, small pools, drains, etc., it is 

 invaluable, and has the further advantage of 

 having an odour that discourages the female 

 mosquito from laying her eggs in any water so 

 treated. For larger expauses of water Surgeon- 

 CaptaiD McCabe made some successful experi- 

 ments which point to the possibilities of elec- 

 tricity. The electrifying of a jar of water con. 



