OBSERVATIONS ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE GENUS CINCHONA. 11 
“The Town and Trade of Liverpool” was next proposed, and responded to by Mr. 
Miller, T.C. 
“Our Colonies,” responded to by Edward Davies, F.C.S. 
“ The Chairman,” by Mr. Mercer, was warmly received and gracefully acknowledged. 
After a few other toasts the company separated, each individually tendering to Mr. 
Mercer kind good wishes for his health and prosperity. 
ORiaiNAIi AND EXTRACTED ARTICLES. 
observations on the present state of our know¬ 
ledge OF THE GENUS CINCHONA. 
BY JOHN ELIOT HOWARD, F.L.S. 
(^Abstract of a Paper read ad a Meeting of the International Botanical Congress, and 
prepared by the Anther, by desire, for the Pharmaceutical Journal.') 
The writer approaches the consideration of the Cinchonaceons plants rather 
more from a practical than from a technically botanical point of view, 
and thinks that much remains yet to be done by careful study of the plants 
themselves, to reduce Botanical terms to harmony with Pharmaceutic requisi¬ 
tions, and thus to discriminate between forms which, in a therapeutic point of 
view, produce wholly different products, and which have been thrown together 
by systematic arrangement founded on insufficient data. The C. micrantlia of 
Huanuco, for instance, produces a “grey bark,” characterized by its abundant 
yield of pure cinchonine; whilst the C. micrantlia of Bolivia differs widely in 
its chemical contents, and presents apparently a somewhat differing form. 
Again, the C. ovata of Pavon and of Peru, gives an entirely worthless bark 
producing aricine (or paracin), whilst the C. ovata, var. rufnervis, Wedd., of 
Bolivia, is a plant allied to the Calisaya in its products, and the C. ovata, var. 
erythroderma, approaches to, and is not improbably found amongst the red- 
bark-producing plarnts. 
Mr. Howard does not propose to found a diagnosis of species, either on the 
chemical constituents of the barks, or on their microscopical constitution, but to 
follow out more fully, and to a greater extent, the consideration of the barks as 
assisting in the discrimination of species and varieties, according to the pre¬ 
cedent so ably established by Dr. Weddell in his admirable Hlistoire des Quin¬ 
quinas.’ 
Mr. Howard is nearly in accordance with Dr. Weddell and with M. Gustave 
Plan chon (whose recently published work* he regards as the most valuable 
manual that has yet appeared cn the subject), in regarding “ Cinchona as 
forming a very natural genus, the different terms of whicii often pass from one 
into anotker by insensible transitions,” but leaving it open for furtner investiga¬ 
tion whether there may not, as stated by Dr. Karsten, be a subgenus, forming 
a point of transition between Cinchona and Ladenbergia. However this point 
may be decided by botanists, the writer thinks that a considerable section of the 
Cinchonx are allied in their cliemical and also in their microscopical charac¬ 
teristics to the Ladenbergix, whilst, on the other hand, some of the latter seem 
to reciprocate this alliance. 
The writer does not, however, regard the “transitions” as insensible, but 
rather as by well-marked and permanent intermediate forms: he looks upon the 
Cinchona not as he would upon the Saliccs, for instance, in which latter family 
it seems immaterial how many or how few are the number of species or varieties 
* ‘Des Quinciiiiiiys,’ par Gus'ave I lanchoii ; Savy, Paris, 1861 . 
