HISTORY IN BOTANICAL STUDY.
103
does not owe this foolish name to Italy? How many of us
recall the fact that our distinction between "troy" and "avoir-
dupois" depends on the difference in the respective weight of
"grains" of barley and wheat? We might, if we chose, balance
the account by citing cases where the Civil Historian has erred
owing to his want of familiarity with the methods observed in
Natural History.
But it may, on the whole, be more satisfactory to seek for
the evidence we need in connection with some individual study,
the subject of which, besides being of general interest at the
present time, is of special interest to members of the Essex Field
Club. Such a subject offers itself in Cinchona Bark, the general
interest in which, as a remedy in the treatment of malarial
fever, has been intensified by the selection, both in America
and in Europe, of the year 1930 as the date appropriate for
the 300th anniversary of the use of this American drug by
European physicians; while the local interest is equally great,
because of the long and honourable connection of Ilford with
the study of this subject and the separation of the active
principles on which its efficacy depends. The subject is so
familiar to all of us that it is only necessary to allude to points
in that history which illustrate the need for attention to the
methods that should guide the conscientious historian.
The year 1930 was chosen as the date for this Tercentenary
because it is believed that in 1630 Francisco Lopez de Canizares,
the corregidor of Loja, now a district in Southern Ecuador,
was cured of malaria by means of Cinchona Bark supplied by an
Indian cacique. The historian is disposed to accept this state-
ment, because it is on record that, in 1632, Barnabe de Cobo,
then head of the Jesuit mission in Peru, sent parcels of Cinchona
Bark to Spain and to Rome. But the historian remembers
that this story did not become current in Europe till after 1739,
and that, along with it, came the story that thirty years earlier
a Jesuit missionary in Malacotas, a village near the town of
Loja, was cured of malaria by means of Cinchona Bark, also
given him by an Indian cacique. The historian knows that the
town of Loja was founded by the Spaniards in 1546, and that the
district of Loja was that in which Cinchona Bark was first
exploited as a commercial natural product: there is, therefore,
no reason why both stories should not be equally true. If this