104 
CALISAYA BARK. 
to a dense forest, to observe the diverse modifications which 
the form and the appearance of the Ichu Cascarilla under- 
go. The color and texture of its different parts, especially, 
undergo the most notable change, according to the degree 
of exposure in which it grows. In one place the leaves are 
coriaceous and matted with strongly colored nerves, and 
with stiff petioles; in another the leaves are soft, and of the 
velvety green peculiar to calisaya, the petioles being 
flabby. Finally, when the head of the adult plant peers 
above the neighboring trees, its organs resume some of the 
characters which it possesses in the state of Ichu Cascarilla. 
The characters by which the presence of C. calisaya is 
recognised in the midst of the forest are very variable, and 
many of them require that species of instinctive skill which 
is found only among the people who have observed 
them all their lives. There is not a practised Cascarillero 
who does not pretend to be able to distinguish the top of 
one of these trees at the distance of a kilometre, by the 
movement of its leaves and the peculiar reflection which 
results from it; this recognition is easier still, if the tree be 
in flower or fruit, the color of which are characteristic. In 
the forest, the trunk is recognised at first sight by the ap- 
pearance of the peridermis, sometimes of a grayish white, 
at others brown or black, but constantly marked by clefts 
or fissures, longitudinal and approximated, connected by 
others which are transverse ; a character which is not ob- 
served in any other tree of these forests, with the exception 
of one or two of its congeners, and, to a certain degree, the 
Vichullo* with which it is sometimes confounded. This 
appearance is frequently, however, concealed by mosses 
and other parasites, which cover more or less the greater 
portion of the trunk, and then the oldest C 'ascarilleros may 
be deceived. I was told that a collector of cinchona bark 
had had his own tent placed against the large trunk of 
*A new species of the genus Laplacea, (Ternstr&miaceaD,) the L. 
quinoderma; see Weddell, p. 9 — 33. 
