222 REPORT ON THE CULTIVATION OF QUINIFEROUS CINCHONA. 
unknown in his own country. He learnt that the great chemist was a simple 
apothecary in the little town of Keeping. The King wished to ennoble him, 
the honour was refused; the order of knighthood was nevertheless transmitted, 
but being addressed to a namesake, Scheele remained with no other title than 
that of one of the greatest chemists of Sweden, and of his age. 
2G, St. George's Place, Hyde Park Corner. 
FIRST ANNUAL REPORT ON THE EXPERIMENTAL CULTIVATION OF 
THE QUINIFEROUS CINCHONA IN BRITISH SIKHIM, FROM 
1st APRIL, 1862, TO 30tii APRIL, 1863.* 
BY T. ANDERSON, ESQ., M.D., OFFICIATING SUPERINTENDENT OF THE BOTANIC GARDENS, 
CALCUTTA. 
The progress of the cultivation of the Cinchona at Darjeeling under my direction 
was fully reported to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal on the 6th August, 1862, and 
the Report was published in the Supplement to the ‘ Calcutta Gazette.’ 
That Report contained the history of the experiment from the dispatch of the plants 
from Calcutta on the 24th March, 1862, until the 1st August. In that Report, I stated 
that the experiment might be considered as having commenced on the 1st of June, as, 
from unavoidable delays in a district where carriage of all kinds was most difficult to 
procure, where skilled labour was scarce and extravagantly expensive, and where even 
the ordinary processes of gardening were quite unknown, I was obliged to keep the 
Cinchona plants confined for two months in Wardian cases, some of them having been 
already subjected to five months of this confinement. The total number of plants with 
which the experiment was commenced on the 1st June was 211. On the 1st of August, 
the number had increased to 1611 of all kinds, of which, however, it is deserving of 
note that 1300 were newly-raised seedlings of Cinchona Pahudiana. In the end of 
August, Mr. Stubbs, the European gardener who had accompanied the plants from 
Calcutta in March, suffered so much from continued illness of a serious nature, that I 
directed Mr. A. T. Jaffrey, who had just been appointed Assistant Gardener of the 
Botanic Gardens in Calcutta, to proceed at once to Darjeeling to receive charge of the 
cultivation from Mr. Stubbs, whom I intended, on bis recovery, to recommend for ap¬ 
pointment to the charge of planting the avenue of mahogany and other trees along the 
Ganges and Darjeeling Road. Mr. Stubbs, however, died on the 26th September at 
Kursiong, where he had gone for change of air. Mr. Jaffrey received charge of the ex¬ 
periment on the 13th September. I again submitted a Report on the 12th November, 
in which it was shown that the total number of plants in the Nursery was 2286, of 
which, however, 1921 belonged to the doubtfully quiniferous species, C. Pahudiana, so 
largely cultivated by the Dutch in Java, leaving only 365 plants as the stock of the un¬ 
doubtedly valuable species of Cinchona. I made a visit of inspection to the Cinchona 
Nursery at Darjeeling in January. I left Calcutta on the 18th January and returned to 
Calcutta on the 1st February. I then saw that my fears, that the height of Sinchal 
above the sea and the cold of the winter would seriously affect the condition of the 
plants, had been confirmed, though there had been few deaths (not more than fifty of 
all species), yet the situation was so unfavourable that almost no cuttings or layers had 
been made since November. This was partly owing also to an untoward accident having 
happened to the flue in one of the two small propagating pits. The upper part of the 
flue immediately over the furnace had fallen in suddenly, causing the house to be filled 
with hot air and smoke, and doing great damage to the plants before the fire could be 
extinguished and the plants removed to the other propagating house. 
In January, I had also an interview with Captain Fitzgerald, the Executive Engineer, 
under whose directions the road leading to the permanent site of the Cinchona Nursery 
was being made. He informed me that the difficulties he had met with in the opening 
out of this road were so great, that the buildings and clearing of the forest could not be 
commenced until the road was finished, and were not likely to be completed until April, 
1864, at the soonest. On learning this, I immediately endeavoured to obtain temporary 
* Supplement to the ‘Calcutta Gazette,’ August 15, 1863. 
