170 ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW 
fit condition, forwarded to their destination. If it be found that 
they are unfit for immediate despatch, the seeds are sown and the 
plants nursed in the small private plant-houses. When they have 
recovered from the effects of the first half of their journey, they are 
sent off in Wardian plant-cases to complete it. 
One of the most successful and most profitable achievements in 
this connection was the introduction of the quinine plant (Cinchona) 
. . from Peru to the hill countries of India. In this work 
Quinine. g- r Q emen t s R. Markham, late President of the Royal 
Geographical Society, took a prominent part. He organised parties 
to search the forests of the Andes for plants and seeds. These were 
despatched to Kew, whence a portion of them was transmitted to 
India, and the remainder grown in the hothouses and forwarded as 
occasion served, not only to India, but to Ceylon and other Colonies. 
In i860, the year in which this experiment was undertaken, it was 
stated that the Indian Government spent over £40,000 in the 
purchase of quinine for Bengal alone. For several years it has 
been possible for anyone to purchase for a pice (about a farthing) 
a dose of five grains in any post-office in Bengal. When it is remem- 
bered that this drug is the only specific for malarial fever, the com- 
monest and most fatal of tropical diseases, it will be realised how 
great a boon the cheapening of it has been to dwellers in the tropics. 
Quinine is largely used in England ; its present price is about one- 
sixteenth of what it was in i860. 
In recent times scarcely any article of tropical origin has been 
put to so many uses, and become so indispensable to civilisation, 
as india-rubber. Numerous rubber-yielding plants exist ; 
they occur on all large tropical areas. But the best and 
most valuable is the Para rubber, the produce of a tree 
( Hevea brasiliensis ) found wild in the Amazonian forests of Brazil. 
The natural supplies of this rubber, though still immense, are very 
inaccessible ; this circumstance, having regard to the rapidly in- 
creasing demand for it, made it important to create fresh sources. 
In 1875, a consignment of 70,000 seeds was received at Kew 
from Brazil. They were immediately sown, and although only a 
small proportion germinated (the seeds of this tree do not long retain 
vitality), it was possible to despatch more than 1,000 plants to Ceylon 
in the same year. From these plants the remainder of the Eastern 
possessions of Britain were subsequently supplied. In Singapore and 
Para 
Rubber. 
