47 
Peru, lay sick of a fever in Lima, and there was sent, also from 
Malacotas, a parcel of quina-quina to the Countess’s physician, with 
instructions for its nsc. It was prescribed for her, and the result 
was a perfect cure. In 1640 the Countess returned to Europe, carry¬ 
ing with her a quantity of this most precious remedy. Hence it 
came to be called Jesuits’ bark by some, and Countess’s bark or 
Countess’s powder by others. It was the Countess who first intro¬ 
duced it to the Old World, and in her honour Linnaeus named the 
genus which yields it, chinchona. The fame of it spread throughout 
the world ; it performed miracles, and among them may be reckoned 
the planting of patristic Christianity in China. A century and a 
half ago there was hardly a province in China where a Catholic 
church did not exist—there was a church within the precincts of the 
Celestial palace itself—and all those churches may be said to have 
been built on Peruvian bark. The Emperor's life had been saved by 
it, and in gratitude to the French Jesuits who introduced it to 
China, the Emperor allowed them to build as many churches as they 
pleased throughout the empire. Of course, the usual difficulties 
arose against the new agent of such mighty cures. France, Spain, 
Rome, and England, united their noted medical men in its condem¬ 
nation ; and among the common people it was sufficient for the 
Protestant to decry a thing which the Jesuits patronized. After 
much angry disputation, and many experiments, the final discovery 
of quinine, and the completion of its chemical history, was made by 
the French chemists, Pelletier and Caventou, in 1820. Further 
discoveries were made nine years later by Pelletier, aud the organic 
constituents of chinchona bark found to be—quina, ckinckonia, 
aricina, quinidia, chinclionidia, quinic acid, tannic acid, kinovic acid, 
chinchona red, a yellow colouring matter, a green fatty matter, starch, 
gum, and lignin. I wish all the others had been as easily understood 
as the last two or three, but I am not responsible for those learned 
terms. I need not describe quinine, or say anything of its usefulness, 
or the multitude of circumstances under which it is applied. They 
are well known. The zone of the chinchona; extends from 10 deg. 
N. to 17 deg. S. latitude, following the bend of the Andes, aud 
describing a line of probably nearly 2000 miles. I have seen them, 
at the sources of the Meta, about 8 dog. N. ; also on the great Quindio 
ranges, and they have been specially observed at their extreme 
southern end by Mr. Markham, a young and ardent traveller, who 
was employed by the Indian Government to transplant them from 
their principal native regions to the Neilgherry hills. It is to Mr. 
Markham’s report we are indebted fur a minute and able description 
of these trees, and the localities where their most valuable species 
are to be found. They flourish in a cool and equable temperature, 
on the slopes and in the valleys and ravines of the mountains, never 
descending below an elevation of 2,500ft., and ascending as high as 
9000 ft. above thes ea level. The ckinchonas, when in good soil and 
under favourable circumstances, become large forest trees—at the 
