296 
Botanical  Source  of  Citprea  Bark. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\      June,  1882. 
ical  News/'  vol.  xlv,  p.  6,  and  ^^Moniteur  Scientifiqiie/^  3d  ser.,  xii, 
p.  144)^  the  new  supposed  alkaloid,  the  discovery  of  whieli  was 
announced  almost  simultaneously  in  Eno;]and  by  Mr.  D.  Howard  and 
Mr.  J.  Hodgkin,  on  the  one  part/ and  by  Dr.  B.  H.  Paul  and  Mr. 
Cownlev,  on  the  other  part,  under  the  names  of  homoquinine  and 
"  ultraquinine."  ^ 
Neverthless  the  existence  of  cinchonamine,  the  new  alkaloid  studied 
and  isolated  by  M.  Arnaud  in  certain  cuprea  barks,  remains  unques- 
tioned. 
The  discovery  thus  made  of  febrifuge  alkaloids  in  the  barks  of  a 
group  of  plants  outside  the  genus  Cinchona,  as  defined  by  me,  ren- 
ders it  necessary  to  reconsider  the  characters  upon  which  the  genus  is 
founded  and  to  estimate  its  affinities  at  their  true  value. 
De  Candolle  constituted  his  genus  Remijia  from  Brazilian  plants 
which  St.  Hilaire,  in  his  Plantes  Usuelles  des  Braziliens,'^  had  referred 
to  the  genus  Cvnchona,  which  had  previously  been  made  known  by 
Vellozo  under  the  name  of  Macrocnemum.  These  plants  are  shrubs 
which  grow  on  the  dry  and  exposed  summits  of  the  mountains  that 
extend  from  north  to  south  of  the  province  of  Minas,  indicating  the 
presence  of  iron  in  the  soil,  according  to  St.  Hilaire. 
According  to  the  same  author  they  have  bitter  barks  which  singu- 
larly resemble  those  of  the  Peruvian  cinchonas,  and  bear  without 
distinction  the  names  of  Quina  de  Serra  (mountain  cinchona)  or 
Quina  de  Remijio  (the  name  of  the  person  who  first  pointed  out  to  the 
Brazilians  their  use  as  a  substitute  for  the  officinal  cinchonas). 
St.  Hilaire,  while  acknowledging  that  perhaps  the  Quina  de  Serra" 
plants  were  only  varieties  of  one  species,  yet  referred  them  to  three, 
called  Cinchona  Remijianay  C.  ferruginea  and  C.  Vellozii,  and  these 
have  been  retained  by  De  Candolle  under  the  new  name  Remijia;  but 
I  believe,  in  fact,  that  they  ought  to  be  considered  as  forms  of  one  spe- 
cific type.  De  Candolle,  adopting  the  idea  of  St.  Hilaire,  who  had 
called  one  of  these  species  Cinchona  Remijiana,  in  order  to  preserve 
^  Mr,  Triana  appears  to  have  overlooked  the  fact  that  Mr.  T.  G.  Whiffen 
also  made  known  the  discovery  of  a  uew  alkaloid,  to  which  he  gave  the 
name  "  ultraquiniiie,"  and  which  was  prohably  the  same  as  that  referred 
to  by  the  other  observers.  As  regards  the  suggestion  that  tliis  alkaloid  is 
really  a  compound  of  quinine  and  quinidine  we  are  still  without  any 
evidence  in  support  of  its  probability  or  of  the  existence  of  such  a  com- 
pound.—Ed.  P.  Z.—See  Amer.  Jour.  Phar.,  1882,  p.  75,  76. 
