October 20, 1887. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
339 
other forms of Chinchona bark extract were only obtainable by the 
wealthy, the prices to the masses of the natives being prohibitory. It 
was not intended, in the first instance I believe, that the State, for any 
length of time at least, should keep itself in the position of a private 
producer and trader, and regularly place large consignments of bark on 
the London market in competition with private individuals. This 
practice, however, has been kept up ever since its adoption in the year 
1872, when the trees planted at the commencement were twelve years 
old. .In consequence of this there have been loud and general complaints 
by private planters against the successive Governments of the day. 
It was in the year 1859 that Her Majesty’s Government engaged 
the services of Mr. Clements R. Markham for the special duty of 
introducing the Chinchona plant into India. He started on an 
expedition to South America in the early part of 1800, and arrived in 
India at the end of the same year with the first instalment of Chinchona 
plants. Mr. Markham was ably assisted in the arduous and dangerous 
work of collecting, establishing in cases, and subsequent transmission to 
India of the different species of Chinchona plants by Mr. Spruce and 
Mr. Cross, both, I believe, practical gardeners and botanists. The plants 
were taken to the Nilgiri Hills and placed} under the care of the late 
Mr. W. G. Mclvor, at that time Superintendent of the Government 
Botanical Gardens at Ootacamund, and who was subsequently appointed 
Superintendent of the Government Chinchona Plantations on the 
Neilgherries. Under his able management the plants introduced from 
South America were rapidly propagated and the magnificent permanent 
plantations of the present day established. The Government, beyond all 
question, were fortunate in having at hand a gentleman of Mr. Mclvor’s 
great abilities to at once undertake the work, otherwise the great success, 
of the experiment might not have been so rapidly achieved. Honours were 
in due season bestowed on the collectors and introducers of the plants, 
and no one grudged them these, but in the opinion of many these honours 
ought to have been divided. With the introduction of the plants the 
undertaking was only, as it were, begun, and all success in this direction 
might easily have been rendered abortive by subsequent mismanagement, 
but, as a fact, the whole of Mr. Mclvor’s labours from the first introduc¬ 
tion of the plants to the complete establishment of the enormous planta¬ 
tions proved to be a brilliant success, but so far from his being equally 
rewarded with Mr. Markham and his coadjutors, we actually find Mr. 
Mclvor in the year 1876, shortly before his death, making the following 
complaint to the Government of Madras : “ It also becomes instructive 
to note the effects of this undertaking on the position of the parties 
employed in its development. Mr. Clements Markham, Mr. Cross, and 
Mr. Spruce, were the prominent agents employed in the introduction of 
the plants and seeds. The duty on which these gentlemen were employed 
was of a preliminary nature and of short duration, and the fruits of 
their labours depended on the judgment with which the plants and 
seeds were managed in this country. The great success I attained in the 
propagation and cultivation of these plants s D cured for these gentlemen 
a graceful and 'well merited reward. Mr. Markham received a bonus of 
£2000, and was created a Companion of the Bath ; to Mr. Spruce a 
ension was granted, and Mr. Cross received a bonus. How different 
as been the effect on myself. Instead of being rewarded I have been 
degraded from that independent position I originally occupied. Even 
the ordinary increments of salary accruing from length of service in 
every position under Government has been denied me, and for upwards 
of ten years I have laboured in this department without receiving an 
increase of emoluments. I do not make this statement in the form of 
complaint, because I am not entirely without my reward. I stemmed 
the torrent of error which would have swept away all benefit from a 
great national undertaking, and my judgment and courage in doing 
this has met with the approbation of the civilised world. Still it is 
impoitant that the illiberal treatment of myself and my department 
should be understood. It has retarded the development of the under¬ 
taking. It has caused all my experienced assistants to leave and seek 
employment elsewhere.” 
What made Mr. Mclvor’s complaint the more bitter was that he 
had been recently, and most unjustifiably, degraded from an independent 
position with regard to the Chinchona experiment to a subordinate one 
under the Commissioner of the Nilgiris consequent upon his in¬ 
domitable pluck in support of views of cultivation and treatment of 
the plantations, which he knew to be right, against those of others of 
no experience, although holding high official positions. 1 may be par¬ 
doned for thus extending my remarks on the late Mr. Mclvor, when it 
is known that at that time it was too much the custom amongst the 
Civil Service officials of India to look askance at successful endeavours 
on the part of anyone outside the pale of their own favoured community, 
and the very name of planter, or. worse still, gardener, was with them 
a byeword or term of reproach. 
In Mr. Mclvor the successive Governments of Madras had a man of 
intelligence and ability, indomitable energy, and great resource, which 
they were not always willing to acknowledge and act upon. Mr. Mclvor 
was appointed by the Honourable East Indian Company Superinten¬ 
dent of the Botanical Gardens in the year 1848 in the uncovenanted 
Civil Service, and this appointment, in conjunction with the superin¬ 
tendence of the Chinchona experiment he held with honour to himself 
till the time of his death in 1876. He was essentially a gardener, and 
was never ashamed of being called by that name. He lost no oppor¬ 
tunity of upholding the honourable character of his calling, or of hold¬ 
ing out encouragement to young men in the same profession throughout 
a long and useful career in India.. 
About the year 1864, or at an early stage in the Chinchona experi¬ 
ment, Mr. Mclvor made the discovery of what is still called the 
“ mossing system,” and which subsequently proved to be a very im¬ 
portant and valuable one. Whether this discovery was made accident¬ 
ally or otherwise is, I believe, not known. It consisted in applying to 
the stems of the trees a thick covering of moss, which was allowed to 
remain for a year, it was then removed and the bark taken from the tree 
by alternate strips of about 1 to 2 inches wide—that is, a strip was 
taken, and one left all round the stem of the tree. It was found that 
this process of excluding the light and air from the stem had the strange 
effect of increasing to a very considerable extent the alkaloids in the bark. 
After the removal of the first strips of bark the stems of the trees were 
again mossed and allowed to remain for another year before the remain¬ 
ing strips were removed. By this time it was found that the decorti¬ 
cated portion of the stem had renewed its bark all over, and presented a 
light coloured granulated appearance This renewal bark in its turn 
was harvested, and found to contain even a greater amount of alkaloids 
than the original bark under the mossing process. Mr. Mclvor made no 
secret of his discovery, but, on the contrary, strongly recommended its 
adoption on the Government plantations. This recommendation was 
met by a storm of opposition from various quarters, but chiefly from the 
Government Medical Department, and from the Government Quinolo- 
gist, who was appointed on a large salary by the Home Government in 
1867, to investigate on the spot various questions connected with the 
elaboration of alkaloids, the harvesting of the bark, the most economical 
and efficacious mode of preparing the febrifuge. &c. One instance of 
the kind of opposition offered may be recorded. Dr. Bidie of the Madras 
Medical Establishment, in a report submitted to Government, bearing 
date 1874, says :—“As various facts appear to me to point to the conclu¬ 
sion that mossing does not increase the alkaloid by exercising a fostering 
influence on the process by which they are eliminated from the crude 
sap, but that the increase is possibly obtained at the expense of the 
original bark.” Dr. Bidie did not state in his report what these 
“ various facts ” were, and the groundlessness of this theory was soon 
after demonstrated by the experiments of the late Mr. Howard on the 
barks produced under the several varying conditions. The Quinologist 
himself recommended the coppicing system of taking bark to that of 
mossing, but Mr. Mclvor had already put this system to the test and 
found it wanting, and so the battle went on, without any very satisfac¬ 
tory results even up to the date of Mr. Mclvor’s death. The fact, how¬ 
ever, that ever since that date renewed barks of all the species of 
Chinchona under the mossing process have obtained in all the markets 
of the world much higher prices than those unsubmitted to such treat¬ 
ment abundantly establishes the great value of the discovrry. Mr. 
Mclvor made an attempt to protect his discovery by applying for a 
patent for the process, which was, perhaps, very properly refused. At 
the same time it is the general opinion in India that he ought to have 
been in some way amply rewarded by a Government that was not slow 
to take advantage of the discovery. 
Private enterprise in Chinchona planting on the Nilgiris has made 
gigantic strides since Mr. Mclvor’s time, notwithstanding the steady 
opposition and petty annoyances offered to planters who are willing to 
invest their capital in the land ; in fact, the development of the indus¬ 
try has been so great, resulting in such an enormous production of 
bark and a consequent reduction in prices, that planters are almost 
beginning to despair of realising the handsome returns they once hoped 
for. In addition to the Government still continuing in the position of 
private producers and sellers of bark on a large scale, they also continue 
to hamper the private planter in many ways, and their unwillingness to 
facilitate the efforts of private enterprise is thus complained of in a 
recent issue of a Nilgiri journal :—“ Thousands of acres of virgin forest 
in the southern and other parts of India, admirably adapted, not only for 
the cultivation of Coffee, Tea, and Chinchona, but of numerous other 
products, are lying idle and unproductive because the Government 
choose, without assigning any reason, to put a veto on their assumption 
by men who would transform them from a desert into a garden, and in 
doing so find employment for and ameliorate the condition of thousands 
of natives. The old cry that India is unsuitable for the employment of 
Europeans is too stale to meet with further credence, and is contra¬ 
dicted by the prosperity of the Tea planters of Assam, Cachar, Chitta¬ 
gong, and the Nilgiris. The real s rnree of this antagonism on the part 
of the Government will, we think, be found in the old Civil Service 
jealousy of Europeans unconnected with the Government obtaining any 
social position, wealth, or influence in the Mofussil. The members of 
the governing faction naturally resent the influx of a body of men who 
share with them the respect of the natives, and who, if allowed to be¬ 
come sufficiently numerous, might ultimately be called upon to assume 
a portion of those magisterial duties which are now reserved for their own 
particular service, and who in time might render that service almost un¬ 
necessary.” With regard to the waste land laws the following is the 
state of matters at present existing on the Nilgiris:—Under the old rules 
rupees two per acre per annum is charged on all forest lands in addi¬ 
tion to the original purchase money, but in no case is any sholah— i.e., 
forest of more than a quarter of an acre in extent given, and if there 
should be a spring or passing stream even these small bits are reserved. 
Under the same rules eight annas or one shilling per acre per annum is 
charged for grass lands, with the first five years free of rent. This 
grass land is not rich, and great care and expense have to be incurred 
before Chinchona plants can be induced to make a start on it, and of 
course growth is slow and the planter has to wait a long time for any 
returns.— Plantek. 
(To be conti'.ued.) 
