468 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [January 2, 1888 
ipecacuanha plant which was to he had. There had 
always been a very distinguished pharmaceutical 
school at Edinburgh, under the auspices of Sir Robert 
Christison, where everything appertaining to pharmacy 
was a matter of great interest, and at the Botanic 
Gardens (here was a notable collection of medicinal 
plants. Amongst others was ipecacuanha, and Dr. An- 
derson obtained all they could spare. He also obtained 
a supply from Kew ; meanwhile, however, he died. 
But propagation had been carried on in Edinburgh, 
and 250 plants were sent out. This might be said 
to be the seed sown a quarter of a century ago, 
which had been quietly germinating in India, until 
that evening they were in a position to sample the 
first harvest. It had been an exceedingly arduous 
process, and rather a discouraging one. More than 
once those whose duty it was to cultivate the plant 
had been very much inclined to give up the task as 
hopeless. Ipecacuanha was perhaps more depressing 
to cultivate under adverse cireumstamces than any 
other plant on account of its slow growth, and the 
general wiriness of its appearance ; but at every point 
when the cultivators began to be despondent some- 
thing had happened which encouraged them to proceed. 
The first difficulty met with was the extreme tardi- 
ness with which these plants could be propagated ; 
in two years they only got fourteen from one plant. 
There were four original plants altogether in India, 
and up to 1873, with every effort and with all the 
additional supplies obtained, the total number was 
something uuder 7000. That represented something 
like eight years work, and of course, from a commerc- 
ial point of view, it was not very encouraging. Then 
it was discovered by the late Mr. Mc Nab at Edin- 
burgh, a very accomplished cultivator, that the 
rhizome of this plant could be cut into infinitesimal 
portions, and that every one of these would grow 
and form a plant, and when this discovery was applied 
in India it led to an enormous increase, so that in 
a short time the number of plants rose from 7000 to 
something like 63,000. At the Cinchona plantation, 
iu Sikkim, there was a clever young gardener named 
Jaffrey who devoted himself to the ipecacuanha ; and 
it was mainly through his exertions that this enormous 
advance was made. Another discovery was also made 
by the Eiinburgh Gardens, by Mr. Lindsay, the 
present Curator, who found, what no one would have 
expected from such a plant, that a single leaf if 
plunged into damp sand would develope buds and 
roots. That method of propagation was not so suc- 
cesssful, however, in India as from the rhizome, 
but still it was used to some extent. Up to about 
1875, as far as methods of propagation were concerned, 
the future of ipecacuanha was secured, but the cul- 
tivation had to be carried almost entirely by artificial 
means, under glass in houses or frames, and notwith- 
standing all the pains devoted to it, it had not 
assumed anything of a commercial character, because 
of course, under such conditions medicinal plants 
could never be produced at a price which would make 
them available in such large quantities as the Govern- 
ment contemplated. However, it was found, as men- 
tioned by Mr. Ransom, quoting from a short note 
he sent to one of the scientific journals early this year, 
that as cultivation uuder glass could not possibly be 
carried on extsnsively, the attempt was made in Sikkim 
to plant it in shady places under trees. It was a 
plant exceedingly sensitive to anything like fierce 
sunlight or dry atmosphere ; it was in fact a character- 
istic kind of tropical undergrowth. This led in Sikkim 
to a very curious result. There was no doubt that 
the original Kew stock came from Brazil, and though 
he had not been able to ascertain exactly the channels 
through which it came, he had no doubt that pains 
were taken to get it from someone who would authen- 
ticate it as being the true ipecacuanha plant. It 
was rather doubtful what the history of the plants 
cultivated in Edinburgh was ; about 1832 was the date 
of the first introduction of ipecacuanha into Europe, 
and one could not perhaps exactly say from what 
Bourse the E linburgh plants came, but probably from 
Brazil. But what the extremely intelligent superin- 
tendent of the Cinchona plantations at Darjeeling 
said was, that these plants, which were sent out as 
apparently the same thing, had certain tangible 
differences, by which to the trained eye of'.the culti- 
vator they could be distinguished, and they could 
always tell which were the E linburgh strain, and 
which the Kew strain. Probably, as constantly 
happened in cultivated plants, there were several forms 
or races of ipecacuauha. and they had been imported 
through two or three channels, and were not precisely 
the same kind. The curious fact was, that although 
in Dr. Anderson's importation the plants from Edin- 
burgh considerably outnumbered those sent from Kew, 
yet the Kew plant happened to have greater consti- 
tution and vigour ; it increased and multiplied, whilst 
the Edinburgh apparently eventually died out. He 
should be the last to say that that was owing to 
any merit on their part at Kew, but it was 
interesting with regard to the future of the drug, 
because knowing the trouble there was to critically 
determine the physiological differences in cinchona 
which accompanied small variations of a morpho- 
logical kind, it would be more interesting to kuow that 
the ipecacuanha supply of India was derived from 
one definite source than from several varieties. He 
did not gather from the paper that the precise source 
of the present sample was exactly ascertained. He 
thought Dr. King as early as 1876 was able to submit 
to the medical service in India some dried root which 
had been grown in that country, which was tried in 
hospital practice, and found to be quite as good as 
the Brazilian drug. In 1877 Dr. King supplied 26 lb. 
of the root which had been grown in frames, and 
this was found satisfactory. No doubt the ipecacuanha 
would be kept alive in some suitable place in Sikkim, 
and in some places also in Southern India conditions 
would be found favourable for it ; but the most promis- 
ing thing iu regard to its cultivation in the old world 
was a report from the Forest Department of the 
Straits Settlements for 1886. Mr. Cantley, who had 
the superintendence of affairs, wrote: — "The ipeca- 
cuanha is a native of Brazil, a plant which has been 
found generally very difficult to cultivate. It seems 
to grow in the Straits with all the luxuriance of its 
native country, when a proper situation is hit upoD ; 
it enjoys a very moist still atmosphere and somewhat 
dense shade. In that situation it forms a compact 
little shrub of about eighteen inches in height, and is 
very ornamental when well in flower. I lately visited 
a plantation of the plants iu Johore, and saw thousands 
of plants in excellent health, protected from the sun 
by palm leaves laid on an artificial stage six feet in 
height, and the edges of the same a few yards apart. 
The soil is of a rich character." It would therefore 
appear to him that it was quite possible that in the 
State of Johore, and some other places in the Straits 
Settlements, there was a climate which was quite 
suitable for the cultivation of this plant on a large scale. 
In conclusion he would only say that it was extremely 
satisfactory to see the way in which the persistency 
which was so characteristic of the best English work 
had been rewarded in this case with ultimate success. 
He knew nothing in the whole field of botanic 
enterprise which exceeded the admirable persistence 
with which the Indian botanists and pharmacists had 
stuck to this business, and had gone on cultivating 
this plant for very nearly twenty years, with very 
little encouragement, until the last few years. Mr. 
Cantley, of the Cinchona Plantation at Darjeeling, 
when success seemed a little more in sight, wrote 
to him, saying that this illustrated the importance 
of never losing heart in work of this kind. You 
must not be disheartened by failures, but try new 
conditions, and adjust the circumstances to the 
varying places in which the plant is grown, and in 
the great majority of cases you would ultimately 
succeed. Being very much occupied he could not 
often hope to take part in these interesting dis- 
cussions, and therefore he desired to add a word in 
support of what had been said by Professor Att- 
field as to the extreme usefulness of the work done 
there. He could assure the Society and the members 
there was no more assiduous student of the Journal 
of the Society than himself, aud if he had not often 
