52 
ON  THE  CINCHONAS  OF  COMMERCE. 
We  cannot  read  the  following  lines  in  M.  Guibourt's  Histoire 
JSTaturelle  des  Drogues  Simples,  without  astonishment : 
"  A  man  who  has  acquired  a  great  reputation  as  the  discoverer 
of  cinchonas,  but  who  has  only  helped  to  fill  the  history  of  these 
barks  with  confusion  and  obscurity,  is  Mutis,  a  Spanish  botanist, 
who  started  in  1760  for  New  Granada,*  where  he  remained,  and 
whom  the  desire  of  making  a  reputation  at  the  expense  of  the 
Flora  of  Peru,  has  caused  to  commit  errors  which  are  found  in  all 
recently  published  works  on  this  subject.  To  justify  this  severe 
judgment,  it  will  suffice  for  me  to  say  that  Mutis,  who  could  not 
help  knowing  the  real  Peruvian  cinchonas,  has  given  their  names 
to  quite  different  and  almost  valueless  barks  growing  at  Santa  Fe. 
Thus  his  vaunted  orange  cinchona  is  only  a  very  fibrous  kind  of 
Calisaya  of  very  bad  quality.  His  red  cinchona,  the  bark  of  his 
cinchona  oblongifolia,  is  only  the  bad  bark,  since  named  cinchona 
nova,  His  yellow  cinchona,  different  from  that  of  La  Condamine, 
and  produced  by  his  cinchona  cordifolia,  is  what  we  now  call  cin- 
chona Carthagena.77 
After  this  violent  diatribe  against  the  eminent  man,  whose  great 
merit  was  recognised  by  all  his  contemporaries,  w7e  turn  with  plea- 
sure to  the  striking  justice  which  Linnaeus  renders  to  Mutis :  JTomen 
immutabile  quod  nulla  cetas  unquam  delebit! 
We  may  also  cite  the  testimony  of  those  celebrated  men  Hum- 
boldt and  Bonpland,  who  went  through  the  same  forests  after  him, 
and  have  confirmed  all  his  observations,  whose  truth  is  even  more 
strongly  shown  when  we  consider  the  richness  in  alkaloids  which 
characterizes  the  cinchonas  of  New  Granada. 
Yes  !  the  name  of  Mutis  is  as  imperishable  for  his  discoveries 
of  cinchonas,  as  the  names  of  Pelletier  and  Caventou  are  for  the 
discovery  of  the  sulphate  of  quinine. 
Orange  Yellovj  Cinchona  of  Mutis. — The  internal  surface 
this  bark  is  of  a  rather  red  orange  yellow;  the  thickness  is  from 
2  to  8  millimetres  on  the  average  of  the  serons,  the  texture  is  uni- 
form, like  the  cinchona  calisaya,  but  not  so  close,  and  with  longer 
fibres.  The  external  surface  is  nearly  smooth,  and  of  a  redder 
yellow  than  the  inside,  sometimes  marked  transversely  with  whitish 
traces  of  the  very  thin  epidermis  which  was  on  it.  Transverse 
*  He  died  there  in  1808, 
