40 
Harvesting  of  Cinchona  Bark. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\       Jan.,  1885. 
The  market  price  is  now  forty  cents  per  pound,  Bolivian  currency. 
It  has  sold  as  high  as  two  hundred  bolivianos  per  quintal.  It  formerly 
paid  a  tax  of  6*40  bolivianos  per  quintal ;  now  one  half,  3*20  bolivi- 
anos, one  half  to  the  Government  and  one  half  municipal. 
As  the  greater  part  of  the  quina  forests  were  destroyed,  and  until 
very  lately,  the  cultivation  of  quina  has  not  been  carried  out  in  a 
proper  manner,  it  is  only  now  that  it  may  be  said  to  be  a  regular  busi- 
ness. The  highest  exportation  of  late  years  has  been  twenty  thousand 
quintals ;  but  it  has  dwindled  down  for  various  causes,  so  that  this 
year  it  will  not  be  more  than  five  thousand  quintals,  and  at  present 
prices  leaves  no  profit,  the  expenses  of  getting  it  to  the  coast  being 
heavy. — Phar.  Jour,  and  Trans. 
THE  HARVESTING  OF  CINCHONA  BARK.^ 
The  old  idea  that  for  the  collection  of  the  bark  it  was  necessary  to 
sacrifice  or  fell  the  whole  tree,  when  grown  to  maturity,  had  long  made 
way  for  a  better  view.  In  English  India,  Broughton  had  begun,  in 
1866,  to  pollard  the  trees,  in  order  to  be  able  to  lop  the  new  shoots 
after  four  to  five  years  (coppicing  system)  as  is  done  in  Europe  with 
oak  and  ash  coppice.  But,  besides  the  trees  receiving  a  serious  shock 
by  this  treatment,  from  which  they  do  not  so  speedily  recover,  the  bark 
thus  obtained  is  not  nearly  so  good  as  the  stem  bark. 
It  was,  therefore,  an  ingenious  idea  of  Mr.  Mclvor,  in  the  Neil- 
gherries,  to  cover  the  stems  with  moss,  in  order  to  improve  the  quality 
of  the  bark.  He  was  led  to  this  by  observing  that  the  best — the 
so-called  crown-cinchona — always  occurs  covered  with  moss.  He  made 
experiments  in  this  direction  and  the  result  was  that,  not  only  was  the 
quality  of  the  bark  improved,  but  that  in  this  way  it  was  possible  to 
strip  the  stem  ot  a  part  of  the  bark  and  to  heal  the  wound  thus  made 
by  covering  it  with  moss,  in  other  words,  to  renew  the  bark  by  artifi- 
cial means. 
By  experiments  on  a  large  scale  the  new  discovery  was  crowned  with 
the  best  success. 
The  "mossing  system"  is  almost  universally  practised  in  Java  since 
1879,  and  numerous  chemical  analyses  have  shown  that  the  proportion 
of  quinine  in  the  renewed  bark  increases,  and  is  even  trebled.  The 
"  coppicing  system  "  is  now  only  practised  when  a  rapid  production  of 
*  From  the  Indian  Mercury.    Reprinted  from  the  Tropical  Agriculturist. 
