Am.  .Jour.  Pharm. 
Feb.,  1885. 
Red  Bark  of  the  Nilgiris. 
95 
the  true  C.  suceirubr-aj  Pav.  I  have  examined  Pavon's  own  specmiens  in 
the  British  Museum,  which  precisely  correspond  with  the  ordinary  red 
bark  of  India,  Ceylon  and  Jamaica." 
Mr.  Cross  has  further  expressed  the  opinion,  in  which  he  has 
received  more  independent  support  than  in  the  other  case,  that  the 
hybrid  form  commonly  met  with  in  our  Indian  plantations,  and  now 
generally  known  as  Cinchona  robiisfa,  is  identical  with  the  Fata  de 
Gallinazo  of  Chimborazo. 
In  this  identification  I  equally  disagree  with  him.  As  the  investi- 
gation of  the  matter  led  to  a  good  deal  of  correspondence,  I  cannot 
do  better  than  quote  the  passage  from  the  Kew  Report  for  1882  (pp. 
38,  39),  in  which  the  net  result  of  the  whole  discussion  is  briefly  sum- 
marized by  Sir  Joseph  Hooker  : 
"  Cinchona  robusta. — In  tlie  Kew  Report  for  1881,  pp.  25,  26, 1  referred  to 
the  hybrid  between  succirubra  and  officinalis^  which  seems  in  the  east  first 
to  have  made  its  appearance  in  Ceylon,  and  thence  to  have  been  introduced 
by  seed  into  the  Sikkim  plantations. 
"  This  form  has,  during  1882,  given  rise  to  a  rather  protracted  correspond- 
ence with  the  Madras  Government.  Mr.  Cross,  who  was  employed  by  the 
India  Office  to  convey  the  Columbian  barks  from  Kew  to  Southern  India, 
insisted  that  the  two  supposed  hybrid  forms  grown  on  the  Nilgiris,  under 
the  names  of  pubescens  and  magnifolia,  were  not  hybrids  but  distinct 
species,  of  which  the  seed  had  been  sent  by  himself  from  the  slopes  of  Chim- 
borazo. After  some  shifting  of  opinion,  .he  seems  finally  to  have  settled 
down  to  the  statement  tliat  magnifolia  was  the  Cinchona  called  in  the 
Chimborazo  bark  district  '  Pata  de  Gallinazo,'  thsit pubescens  was  true  suc- 
cirubra^ and  that  the  succirubra  of  the  Madras  plantations  was  micrantha 
(gray  bark). 
"  In  all  these  identifications  his  recollections  of  plants  seen  no  less  than 
twenty  years  before  seem  to  have  misled  him.  Unfortunately,  his  views 
were,  to  a  certain  extent,  adopted  by  the  eminent  quinologist,  Mr.  Howard, 
and  it  therefore  became  necessary  to  critically  examine  them,  as  such 
gigantic  errors  in  nomenclature  could  not  but  very  seriously  affect  the 
future  policy  of  administration  of  the  Madras  cinchona  plantations. 
"Under  instructions  from  the  Madras  Government,  very  copious  and 
carefully  prepared  sets  of  all  the  Cinchonas  cultivated  in  the  Nilgiris  were 
despatched  to  Kew,  both  by  Colonel  Beddome  and  by  Surgeon-Major  Bidie, 
the  Superintendent  of  the  Madras  Central  Museum.  They  were  very 
thoroughly  examined,  and  tliere  appeared  no  valid  reason  for  disputing 
the  accepted  names  under  which  the  plants  had  been  grown  or  for  adopting 
those  assigned  to  them  by  Mr.  Cross. 
"  The  authentic  specimens  of  the  Pata  de  Gallinazo,  collected  by  Spruce, 
and  described  by  him  in  his  official  report,  are  preserved  in  the  Kew  Her- 
barium.   They  have  been  subsequently  identified  at  Kew  by  Spruce  (con- 
