REVIEWS. 
491 
mation, both as regards the past history of the New Granada barks and our present 
knowledge of the genus. Mr. Markham says in his preface, that ‘‘less information has 
hitherto been furnished to Euglish readers respecting the New Granada chinchona spe¬ 
cies than any others ; and as we have already one New Grauada species flourishing in 
India, while sanction has been obtained for the collection of seeds of the others, it 
seems desirable that all existing information respecting the important chinchona; of that 
region should be made easily accessible.” 
The chief utility of reference to the past, is to correct the errors of the celebrated 
Mutis, to whom we owe the old distinction of red, yellow, orange-coloured, and white 
barks,—a classification which has led to endless confusion, as being, in its primary con¬ 
ception, erroneous, and, if possible, rendered still more hopelessly embarrassed by its 
attempted adaptation to the barks of other regions. Thus the red bark of Mutis is not 
the true red bark of Pavon and of the Pharmacopoeia ; the yellow bark of Mutis is not the 
cortex cinchonae flavgeof medicinal celebrity, but a comparatively useless kind ; this and 
the orange-coloured alone of the true barks seem to have come under Dr. Mutis’s personal 
cognizance, and his account is consequently exceptionally correct (only that the latter was 
erroneously stated by him to be the same as the Quinaprimitiva of Loja), whilst the white 
bark is not the produce of a cinchona at all. and is wholly devoid of medicinal virtue. 
It is unfortunate that both Linna;us and Humboldt were misled in different points, 
through relying on the authority of Don Jose Celestino Mutis, who set the example of 
propagating a theoretical conception of the genus, with a most insufficient and one-sided 
view of the facts of the case. This course was also afterwards followed by Ruiz and 
Pavon, the Spanish botanists sent out by their Government to examine the opposite side 
of the continent of South America in its botanical aspects ; since after going on steadily 
for some years, examining and carefully describing individual species (the only legiti¬ 
mate mode of arriving at the truth), they became at length involved in a controversy of 
no small asperity with the disciples of Mutis, and seem to have lost both time and tem¬ 
per in the endeavour to prove (against all the facts of the case) that the species described 
by Mutis were the same as their own. 
We are now for the first time presented with the opportunity of correcting our 
opinion, by the examination of the manuscript of Mutis himself which Mr. Markham 
tells us he succeeded in obtaining at Madrid, through the kind exertions of Don Pascual 
de Gayangos and of Don Miguel Colmeiro, the learned Curator of the Botanical Gardens 
there. It is satisfactory to find that there are some Spaniards who still care for science, 
but melancholy to reflect on the utter neglect with which the government of that once 
great nation treats the treasures of learning accumulated by the labours of their subjects 
in other days. The work of Mutis of which we are speaking had been “ buried,” Mr. 
Markham informs us, “in a tool-house at Madrid for fifty years,” and with it “a large 
bundle of dried specimens marked Chinchonse, but without labels or notes. . . . There 
are also a number of coloured drawings of chinchonse in the same room, together with 
upwards of 20,000 drawings of other plants, and 5000 beautiful coloured drawings by 
the South American disciples of Mutis. The whole collection is in a lamentable state 
of confusion and neglect, and is likely to remain so.” Could not these also be rescued 
by Mr. Markham from the custody of the present Government of Spain, and made the 
property of the European world of science ? 
We now turn to the second part of the work, which gives us the account of Dr. 
Karsten and of his researches in South America, as well as of the result of these re¬ 
searches in the description of eight species of plants enumerated as of the genus Chin¬ 
chona , two of the genus Heterasea, Karsten, and five of the genus Ludeuberyia, emendat. 
Karsten. 
It is well for the interests of science that Dr. Karsten has the patronage of a Govern¬ 
ment standing in most favourable contrast to that of Madrid, and that he should have 
been enabled thus to complete the magnificent work to which he has devoted much of 
his attention since his return, entitled ‘ Florae Columbine Terrarumque Adjacentium 
Specimina Selecta,’ edidit H. Karsten, Berlin, 1861, comprising most beautifully exe¬ 
cuted coloured plates of all the species mentioned above, as well as nearly two hundred 
plants of other genera. The descriptions, given both in Latin and in German, attest 
the care and discriminating skill of this hard-working botanist, who is not con¬ 
tent with either treading without examination in paths marked out by prescriptive 
usages, nor, on the other hand, can he be accused, as we think, of the error of building 
