April 2, 1898. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
493 
turn them out carefully without breaking any of the 
roots. To do this properly it may he best to break 
the pot. After well draining the pots place a small 
quantity of peat in with the plant and finish off with 
a layer of live sphagnum moss. Hang the plants up 
where they are out of the way of woodlice and 
slugs, and carefully examine them every day so 
that they do not suffer for want of water; for, being 
in small pots, they dry up quickly. Some plunge 
the small seedling pot into a larger one, but it is not 
a good plan, I think.— C. 
-- 5 -- 
Melons. —The earliest plants will now have set a 
sufficiency of fruits, and every attention must be 
given, so that they may swell rapidly and regularly. 
If the positions of the fruits upon the several plants 
have been carefully chosen there will be little fear of 
one fruit swelling to an abnormal size at the expense 
of the others, as is too frequently the case when 
they are so situated that one gets a larger quantity 
of nutriment than the others. The number of fruits 
allowed to a plant must of course depend upon the 
requirements of the establishment. In cases where 
very large fruits are in favour, one or two fruits will 
be quite as much as can be expected from each 
plant, especially where close planting is prac¬ 
tised. Smaller fruits and a greater number are, 
however, of far more service in the majority of 
establishments, where a fruit once cut is not sent to 
the table again. 
Top-dressing.— Where the plants were planted on 
mounds or hillocks of earth the roots should now be 
making their appearance round the sides. The 
opportunity should, therefore, be taken to give a 
good top-dressiDg. This should consist of good 
loam, the temperature of which has been raised to 
the same as that of the bouse by being placed 
within it for a few days. See that this soil is not 
too wet when it is used, or the ramming that is 
necessary to properly incorporate it with the old 
material, and to induce the sturdy, "short-jointed 
growth that all Melon growers love, will cake the 
soil, and render it unkindly. 
The night temperature should not now be allowed 
to fall below 65° Fahr., which temperature may be 
easily obtained by shutting the house early in the 
day, thus imprisoning a good deal of the sun's heat, 
supplementing this by judicious firing. SyriDging 
should be regularly performed twice a day, the first 
application being given about 8 a.m., and the second 
not later than 3 p.m.—if half-an-hour earlier so 
much the better. 
Succession House. —As the plants for a succes¬ 
sion crop have now developed into sturdy little 
specimens, with two or three rough leaves, and the 
roots have reached the sides of the pots, a house 
should be got ready without delay to receive them. 
The thorough cleansing and sulphuring given the first 
one should be given in this case also, and then the 
fermenting material, which should meanwhile have 
been turned twice or thrice, may be put in, and the 
beds made up. The young plants may require a 
little shading for a few days after planting, but they 
will not need it for long. Once they have got over 
the check of shifting, and have started to grow, all 
the light possible should be given them. Keep up a 
temperature of from 63° to 64° Fahr., if the former, 
so much the better.— A. S. G. 
— — 
THE CINCHONA IN INDIA.* 
My remarks this evening on the Cinchona industry 
in India will be chiefly confined to my own experience * 
in British Sikkim, where I held executive charge of 
the Bengal Government plantations from the year 
1865, when they consisted of a quarter of an acre 
only, till seven months ago, when I retired from 
active service. For the last twenty years of my 
service I also had charge of the factory which was 
started at the plantations for the extraction of the 
Cinchona products. So I shall have something to 
say on the manufacture as well as the culture of the 
Cinchona. 
Quinine is principally got from the bark of trees 
♦Paper read at the monthly conversazione at the Horti¬ 
cultural Club, on Tuesday, March 8th, by Mr. J. A. Gammie. 
and shrubs belonging to the genus Cinchona. Indeed, 
till about twenty-seven years ago it was hardly 
known that it was obtainable from any other genus ; 
but it was then ascertained that the bark of an allied 
genus, Remijia, also yielded it, although in smaller 
proportion. In 1880, and for several subsequent 
years, when Cinchona bark was scarce and dear, and 
quinine selling at famine prices, Remijia, or Cuprea 
bark, as it was commercially called, was imported 
from S. America for the European quinine factories 
in very large quantities; but later on, when the 
markets become stocked to overflowing with the rich 
cultivated Cinchona barks of India, Ceylon, Java, S. 
America, and other countries, prices fell, and the 
importation of Cuprea bark became unprofitable, and 
consequently ceased. The price of quinine is now so 
low that it would hardly pay the manufacturers to 
work up Cuprea bark, with its small proportion of 
alkaloids, even if they got it for nothing ; for the 
expensive manipulation of a large quantity of bark, 
to get only a little low-priced quinine cannot be a 
profitable operation. Owing to over production, the 
price of both Cinchona bark and sulphate of quinine 
has fallen so low, that the planters get actually less 
for the bark than it costs them to grow and market 
it, whilst the quinine makers can hardly have fared 
much better ; but the fever-stricken millions of the 
malarious parts of India aod other hot countries reap 
the benefit; and to benefit them, rather than either 
planter or manufacturer, was the avowed object of 
our Government in introducing the Cinchonas to 
India and other countries. The results have exceeded 
the most sanguine expectations, for the introduction 
has been the means of bringing the price of quinine 
so low as to place it witnin easy reach of the very 
poorest. It is one of the few medicines of foreign 
manufacture that the natives of the East, almost 
without exception, implicitly believe in, and their 
confidence in it is likely to continue whilst quinine 
remains so cheap that there is but little temptation 
to adulterate it. Many substitutes have been from 
time to time put on the market, but not one has 
stood the trial test, and quinine is likely to remain, 
as it so long has been, the only safe specific for 
malarial fevers. 
Formation of Plantations. 
First, then, concerning the formation of planta¬ 
tions. The planter in the East has no convenient 
nurseryman to indent on for his plants as his brother 
at home has, so must raise his own, and in fact, do 
everything for himself, from the making of bricks to 
the building of factories and fixing machinery. In 
Sikkim there were, practically, but two methods of 
raising plants practised, viz., by seed and by cuttings. 
In the earlier years of the enterprise seed was not 
obtainable, and plants had to be raised from cuttings, 
which was done in the ordinary way. There were 
three main species to deal with :—Succirubra, or 
Red-bark ; Officinalis, or Crown-bark ; and Calisaya 
var. ledgeriana, or Yellow-bark. Usually ninety- 
five to a hundred per cent, of the Succirubra cuttings 
rooted without any trouble, but Officinalis was not 
so accomodating, although not very troublesome, 
and ledgeriana was almost a complete failure, but 
of many and many a batch of it not a single cutting 
rooted and seldom more than five to ten per cent. 
There was nothing peculiar either in the way the 
seedlings were raised. The seed was sown in long, 
narrow, terraced beds, protected by low thatched 
roofs from rain and sun, but open at the sides for 
free admission of air and light. The seedlings were 
kept in the same sort of protected beds, with several 
transplantings, as they grew and required more room, 
till 6 in. or 9 in. high, when advantage was taken of 
a spell of dull weather to remove the thatch and get 
them inured to the weather previous to planting out 
in the plantation. The sites selected for plantations 
were on the steep mountain slopes, at elevations 
lying between 1,000 ft. and 5,000 ft., flattish ground 
being avoided, as Cinchonas cannot long endure 
stagnant water at their roots ; and artificial drainage, 
however elaborate, does not do much good with a 
yearly rainfall of 120 in. to 250 in. On the selected 
sites the jungle, usually consisting of a mixture of 
trees, bamboos, and shrubs, is cut close to the 
ground, and great care taken to leave nothing uncut 
to ensure everything dying and drying together, 
otherwise there might be an imperfect burn which 
would entail extra work in the final clearing. The 
cutting is best done in December, after the dry 
season has fairly set in, and the burning in the end 
of March, when the weather is hot and dry. After 
the ground is cleared, roads have to be traced and 
made, and pegs put down in straight rows at the 
distance apart it is proposed to plant, usually 4 ft. to 
6 ft. each way. Then pits of about 2 ft. across and 
nearly as much in depth are dug out, and afterwards 
filled in with the same soil mixed with any convenient 
decayed vegetable matter, and on these little mounds 
the plants are firmly planted, one at each peg, after 
the soil has been well saturated with rain, and the 
sky is overcast. At the time of planting, the seed¬ 
lings are usually from twelve to fifteen months old, 
counting from date of the sowing. For three or four 
years the ground between the plants has to be kept 
fairly free of weeds, and occasionally dug over. 
Afterwards but little cultivation is necessary, as the 
plants will be covering the ground and able to take 
care of themselves. When the first plants were 
large enough to yield bark suitable for chemical 
analysis, it was found that the Red Bark, whether 
from seed or cuttings was fairly uniform in quality 
and of the typical character, i.e., rich in the inferior 
alkaloids, cinchonidite, and cinchonine, but 
rather poor in quinine. So it was only 
a question of expediency whether the plants 
were raised from seed or cuttings, the result 
in alkaloids being the same. It is not a good bark 
for quinine making, but is perhaps the most useful 
to the ordinary druggist for his tonics and other pre¬ 
parations. The crown bark was also uniform in 
quality and true to type, however raised. It is one 
of the very best barks for the manufacture of 
sulphate of quinine, as it is rich in quinine, and com¬ 
paratively poor in the inferior alkaloids. It thrives 
to perfection in Travancore, and other parts of 
southern India, but is rather a failure everywhere in 
the more northern Himalayan regions. Its stem 
bark will yield from 3 to 6 per cent, of its weight of 
sulphate of quinine. The yellow bark behaved 
quite differently. The cutting-raised plants, of 
course, yielded bark of exactly the same composition 
as the parents, but the seedlings differed in the most 
perplexing way, both from their parents and from 
each other. The better sorts yielded from 8 to 10 
and even 16 per cent, of sulphate of quinine, but the 
inferior sorts which were quite as numerous, or per¬ 
haps more so, less than 2. To make matters 
worse, the good sorts are quite indistinguishable 
from most of the bad till the trees grow up and 
flower, and not always then even. The original 
seeds, from the Andes, yielded just as mixed a pro¬ 
geny as the Indian grown did in later years. They 
were collected in Bolivia for a Mr. Ledger by his 
half-caste servant, who was afterwards killed for 
having procured them for export, and thus destroyed 
the monopoly of so valuable a product to its native 
country. These seeds were first offered for sale by 
Mr. Ledger to the India Office, who refused them, 
not knowing that they were of any special value, or 
that they differed from variet ies of Calisaya already 
in India. Ultimately they were divided between a 
Madras private planter, for his plantation on the 
Nilgiris, and the Dutch Government for their 
plantations in Java. Part of the planter’s share was 
afterwards exchanged with the Madras Government 
for other sorts of Cinchona seed, and, through an 
old friend, I got a very small packet, from which we 
raised 800 plants. These were the parents of most 
of the Ledger plants since grown in India and 
Ceylon, for the species did not thrive on the Nilgiris 
but speedily died out, and the Dutch were careful to 
reserve the Java-grown seeds of the better varieties 
for their own use for many years. But till the first- 
grown bark was analysed, neither the Dutch nor 
English had any idea of the value of the prize they 
possessed, and till the trees flowered the species even 
was uncertain. The first flowering specimens were 
submitted to the late John Eliot Howard, the famous 
London manufacturer of the purest sulphate of 
quinine ever put on the market. Mr. Howard had 
made a special study of the genus Cinchona, and 
published extensively on both its botany and 
chemistry, and was for many years a trusted 
adviser of Government on the introduction of the 
Cinchonas to India, in which he took the keenest 
interest. So, altogether, he was in the best position 
to determine the species. He pronounced it to be a 
variety of Calisaya, and named it Cinchona Calisaya 
var. ledgeriana. A few years later Moens, the 
superintendent of the Java plantations, who was a 
most excellent analytical chemist, but made no pre¬ 
tence to any knowledge of botany, raised it to 
