39° 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [December i, 1887. 
Mr. Mclvor's great abilities to at once undertake 
the work, otherwise the great success of the ex- 
periment might not have been so rapidly achieved. 
Honours were iu due season bestowed on the collect- 
ors and introducers of the plants, and no one 
grudged them these, but in the opinion of many 
these honours ought to have been divided. With 
the introduction of the plants the undertaking was 
only, as it were, beguu, and all success in this 
direction might easily have been rendered abortive 
by subsequent mismanagement, but, as a fact, the 
whole of Mr. Mclvor's labours from the first in- 
troduction of the plants to the complete establish- 
ment of the enormous plantation proved to be 
a brilliant success, but so far from bis being equally 
rewarded with Mr. Markham and his coadju- 
tors, we actually find Mr. Mclvor in the year 1876, 
shortly before his death, making the following 
complaint to the Government of Madras : — " It also 
becomes instructive to note the effects of this under- 
taking on the position of the parties employed in 
its development. Mr. Clements Markham, Mr. 
Cross, and Mr. Spruce were the prominent agents 
employed in the introduction of the plants and seeds. 
The duty on which these gentlemen were employed was 
of a preliminary nature and of short duration, and 
the fruits of their labours depended on the judg- 
ment with which the plants and seeds were managed 
in this country. The great success I attained in the 
propagation and cultivation of these plants secured 
for these gentlemen a graceful and well merited 
reward. Mr. Markham received a bonus of £ 2000, 
and was created a Companion of the Bath ; to Mr. 
Spruce a pension was granted, and Mr. Cross re- 
ceived a bonus. How different has been the effect 
on myself. Instead of being rewarded I have been 
degraded from that independent position I originally 
occupied. Even the ordinary increments of salary 
accruing from length of service in every positioa 
under the Government has been denied me, and for 
upwards of ten years I have laboured in this de- 
partment without receiving an increase of emolu- 
ments. I do not make this statement in the form 
of complaint, because I am not entirely without my 
reward; I stemmed the torrent of error which 
would have swept away all benefit from a great 
national undertaking, and my judgment and courage 
in doing this has met with the approbation of the 
civilised world. Still it is important that the illiberal 
treatment of myself and my department should be 
understood. It has retarded the development of 
the undertaking. It has caused all my experienced 
assistants to leave and seek employment elsewhere." 
What made Mr. Mclvor's complaint, the more 
bitter was that he had been recently, and most 
unjustifiably degraded from an independent positiou 
with regard to the Chinchona experiment to a sub- 
ordinate one under the Commissioner of the Niigiris 
consequent upon his indomitable pluck in support 
of views of cultivation and treatment of the plant- 
ations, which he knew to be right, against those 
of others of no experience, although holding high 
offical positions. I may be pardoned for thus ex- 
pan ling ray remarks on the late Mr. Mclvor, when 
it is known that at the time it was too much the 
custom amongst the Civil Service officials of India 
to look askance at successful endeavours on the part 
of anyone outside the pala of their own favoured 
commuuity, and the very name of planter, or worse 
still, gardener, was with them a byword or term of 
reproach. 
In Mr. Mclvor the successive Governments of 
Madras had a man of intelligence and ability, in- 
domitable energy, and great resource, which they 
were not always willing to acknowledge or act upon. 
Mr. Mclvor was appointed by the honorable East 
IncliHii Company Superintendent of the Botanical 
Gardens in the year 1848 iu the uncovenated Civil 
Service, and this appoiutme.nt, in conjunction with 
the Superintendence of the Chinchona experiment ho 
held with honour to himself till the time of his 
death, in 1876. He was essentially a gardener, and 
WM never ashamed of being called by that name. 
He lost no opportunity of upholding the honourable 
character of his calling, or of holding out encourage- 
ment to young men in the same profession through- 
out a long and useful career in India. 
About the year 1864, or at an early stage in the 
Chinchona experiment, Mr. Mclvor made the discovery 
of what is still called the " mossing system," and 
which subsequently proved to be a very important 
and va'uable one. Whether this disoovery was made 
accidentally or otherwise is, I believe, not known. 
It consisted in applying to the stems of the trees a 
thick covering of moss, which was allowed to remain 
for a year, it was then removed and the bark taken 
from the tree by alternate strips of about 1 to 2 
irches wide —that is, a strip was taken, and one left 
all round the stem of the tree. It wis fouQd that 
this process of excluding the light and air from the 
stem had the strange effect of increasing to a very 
considerable extent the alkaloids in the bark. After 
the removal of the first strips of bark the stems of the 
trees were again mossed and allowed to remain for 
another year before the remaining strips were removed. 
By this time it was found that the decorticated 
portion of the stem had renewed it* bark 
all over, and presented a light coloured granu- 
lated appearance. This renewed bark in its turn 
was harvested, and found to contain even a greater 
amount of alkaloids than the original bark under the 
mossing process. Mr. Mclvor made no secret of this 
discovery, but, on the contrary, strongly recommended 
its adoption on the Government plantations. This 
recommeudation was met by a storm of opposition from 
various quarters. But chiefly from the Government 
Medical Department, and from the Government Quino- 
logist, who was appointed on a large salary by the 
Home Government in 1867 to investigate on the spot 
various questions connected with the elaboration of 
alkaloids, the harvesting of the bark, the most economic- 
al and efficacious mode of preparing the febrifuge, &c. 
One instance of the kiud of opposition offered may be 
recorded. Dr. Bidie of the Madras Medical Estab- 
lishment, in a report submitted to Government, 
bearing date 1874, says : — " As various facts appear 
to me to point to the conclusion, that mossing does 
not increase the alkaloids by exercising a fostering in- 
fluence on the process by which they are eliminated 
from the crude sap, but that the increase is possibly 
obtained at the expense of the origiual bark." Dr. 
Bi lie did not state in his report what these " various 
facts " were, and the groundlessness of this theory was 
soon after demonstrated by the experiments of the 
late Mr. Howard on the barks produced under the 
several varying conditions. The Quinologist himself 
recommended the coppicing system of taking bark to 
that of mossing, but Mr. Mclvor had already put this 
system to the test and found it wanting, and so 
the battle went on, without anv very satisfactory 
results even up to the dale of Mr. Mclvor's death. 
The fact, however, that ever since that date renewed 
barks of all the species of Chinchona uuder the moss- 
ing process havs obtained in all the markets of the 
world much higher prices than those unsubmitted to 
such treatment abundantly establishes the great value 
of the discovery. Mr. Mclvor made an attempt to 
protect his discovery by applying for a pateut for the 
process, which was perhaps, very properly refused. 
At the same time it is the general opinion in India 
that he ought to have been iu some way amply re- 
warded by a Government that was not slow to take 
advantage of the discovery. 
Private enterprise in Chinchona planting on the Nii- 
giris has made gigantic strides since Mr. Mclvor's 
time notwithstanding the steady opposition and petty 
annoyances offered to planters who are willing to 
invest their capital in the land ; in fact, the develop- 
ment of the industry has been so great, resulting in 
such an enormous production of bark and a con- 
seqaent reduction in prices, that planters are almost 
beginning to despair of realising the handsome returns 
they once hoped for. In addition to the Government 
still continuing iu the positiou of private producers 
and sellers of bark on a large scale, they also continue 
to hamper the private planter iu many wayp, and 
