272 NOTES OF A BOTANIST chap. 
the dye is made, or we should use it ourselves for our ponchos and 
bayetas, and not let foreigners take away so much of it." There 
is to this day the same repugnance to using the bark as a febri- 
fuge as Humboldt remarked sixty years ago, and as exists also in 
New Granada, where Cedron and various other substances are 
preferred to Quina. I think I can explain this repugnance. The 
inhabitants of South America, although few of them have heard 
of Dr. Cullen, have a theory which refers all diseases to the 
influence of either heat or cold, and (by what seems to them a 
simple process of reasoning) their remedies to agents of the 
opposite complexion ; thus, if an ailment have been brought on 
by "calor," it must be cured with "frescos"; but if by "frio," 
with "calidos." Confounding cause and effect, they suppose all 
fever to proceed from "calor." Now they consider the cascarilla 
a terribly strong " calido," and justly ; so, by their theory (which 
is the reverse of Hahnemann's), its use could only aggravate the 
symptoms of fever. . . . 
Even at Guayaquil there is such a general disinclination to the 
use of quinine that, when the physicians there have occasion to 
prescribe it, they indicate it by the conventional term " alcaloide 
vejetal," which all the apothecaries understand to mean " sulphate 
of quinine," while the patient is kept in happy ignorance that he 
is taking that deadly substance. 
The lowest site of the Red Bark at Limon is at an elevation of 
2450 feet above the sea, where the Chasuan receives the rivulet 
already mentioned as running below our hut. It is precisely the 
point where the track from Ventanas leaves the Chasuan (along 
whose margin it had run thus far, with a gentle ascent from the 
plain) and begins to ascend the steep cuesta separating the 
Chasuan from its tributary, the ascent being 350 feet in the first 
500 yards ; so that where the real ascent of the Andes begins there 
also begins the Red Bark. At San Antonio, however, I saw a 
tree at a height of no more than 2300 feet ; and, if I might believe 
my informants, trees of immense size have been cut down at 
points whose height I estimate at barely over 2000 feet. Follow- 
ing the track leading to Guaranda, the last Bark trees growing by 
the roadside are at a height of 3680 feet; but leaving the track, 
and following, the hill-side on the left bank of the Limon, there are 
Bark trees scattered about for a distance of a league, and up to a 
height of near 4500 feet. On the opposite ridge, or that separating 
the Limon from the Chasuan, there are also several trees ascend- 
ing to a still greater elevation, or nearly to 5000 feet ; but I did 
not take the barometer to these latter, which were all sterile, in 
consequence of growing in lofty forest. 
The cascarilleros do not usually go in quest of Bark trees 
before August, there being generally less fog in that and the 
following month than at any other period of the year. . . . The 
