494  Cinchona  Calisaya  Ledgeriana.  {*m'^;&£T** 
CINCHONA  CALISAYA  LEDGERIANA. 
By  K.  W.  VAN  Gorkom. 
Translated  and  abridged  from  "Pharm.  Ztg."  Aug.  6,  1879,/.  480,  by  Louis  <von 
Cotzhausen,  Ph.G. 
C.  Ledger,  an  Englishman,  made  a  contract  with  the  Australian 
Government  to  supply  the  latter  with  South  American  Alpacas,  and 
for  this  purpose  remained  in  South  America  from  1841  to  1858,  when 
he  returned  to  Australia,  where  the  acclimatization  of  the  Alpacas 
had  but  little  success.  Having  returned  to  Peru  in  1865,  he  was  sup- 
plied by  his  former  servant  Manuel,  who  at  one  time  had  been  a  Cas- 
carillero,  and  therefore  was  well  acquainted  with  the  cinchona  regions, 
with  a  package  of  cinchona-tree  seeds  which  had  been  collected  in  the 
province  Caupolican.  This  package  was  sent  by  Ledger  in  the  month 
of  July,  1865,  by  way  of  Arica,  to  his  brother  in  England,  with  the 
instruction  to  endeavor  to  sell  it  to  the  English  Government.  Being 
unsuccessful  in  this,  his  brother  placed  a  portion  of  the  seeds  at  the 
disposition  of  the  Netherland  Government  and  sold  the  remaining  por- 
tion to  Mr.  Money  ;  the  former  were  successfully  planted  in  Java  in 
1865,  and  the  latter  in  the  British-India  plantations  with  but  little 
success. 
The  young  plants  in  the  Java  plantations  numbered  20,000,  and 
were  kept  separate,  although  Ledger  had  stated  that  the  seeds  were 
obtained  from  Cinchona  calisaya,  which  was  already  cultivated  very 
extensively  in  Java  at  that  time. 
In  1868  the  trees  were  attacked  by  a  small  insect,  Helopeltis  Antonii, 
the  same  insect  which  has  greatly  injured  the  tea  plantations  for  a  num- 
ber of  years,  and  is  known  and  dreaded  under  the  name  of  tea-rust. 
These  insects,  now  also  known  as  cinchona-rust,  are  peculiar  to  this 
species  of  cinchona,  and  greatly  injure  the  young  plants,  baffling  almost 
all  efforts  to  exterminate  them  ;  when  the  trees  have  reached  a  certain 
age  and  size  they  are  more  able  to  resist  the  attacks  of  the  insect.  In 
1872  the  trees  had  grown  to  such  an  extent,  in  spite  of  the  cinchona- 
rust,  that  portions  of  the  bark  could  be  removed  and  analyzed,  although 
the  trees  had  not  yet  been  in  bloom  ;  the  analysis  yielded  such  an  unu- 
sually large  percentage  of  quinia  that  200  kilograms  of  the  bark  sold  at 
Amsterdam,  at  a  public  sale  in  1873,  brought  on  an  average  4*62  florins, 
for  \  kilogram,  more  than  double  the  price  of  the  best  American  cinchona 
barks.    When  the  trees  were  in  bloom  they  were  found  to  belong  to 
