NATURAL HISTORY OF THE CINCHONAS. 
27 
the work, and will excite much interest in the talented 
young man whose zeal, intelligence, and courage have 
accomplished so much. 
Since the lime of Condamine, who was the first to describe 
the cinchonas in Europe, until the illustrious travellers 
Humboldt and Bonpland, to whom we are indebted for the 
earliest accounts of the geography of this class of plants, a 
number of learned men of all countries have made this the 
object of their researches ; and a catalogue alone of the 
works published on this subject would occupy many pages. 
But only a small number of those who have described the 
cinchonas have studied them in their native country, and it 
is the observations of these few which have furnished matter 
for the greater part of the other writers. 
The origin of the bark of the cinchona was for a long time 
a mystery. It was Condamine who first threw any light 
on the subject, and to this further additions were but slowly 
made. Joseph de Jussieu in 1735 accompanied as botanist 
the Commission of the Academy of Sciences sent to measure 
a degree of the meridian under the equator. He visited 
about the same time as the celebrated astronomer, the cin- 
chona forests of Loxa, those of high Peru, and almost 
penetrated into the frontier of Brazil. A succession of un- 
fortunate accidents prevented the publication of the results 
of his researches. He did not return to Europe until 1771, 
after an absence of thirty-six years, and was then deprived 
of his reason. 
Thirty years later, two expeditions were engaged to ex- 
plore the cinchona regions in lower Peru and New Granada, 
the one directed by the celebrated Mutis, the other by Ruiz 
and Pa von. The immense investigations of these natural- 
ists did not advance the history of these plants as much as 
might have been expected. Since the observations of 
Messrs. Humboldt and Bonpland, who visited the same 
country subsequently, the region from which the cinchonas 
are exported has been greatly increased, in consequence of 
