HISTORY IN BOTANICAL STUDY. 109
treatise in which de Blegny advocated its use in 1682 describes
Cinchona bark as "le Remede Anglais."
In a recent important treatise on Cinchona its natural history
is condensed into the statement that the tree was known to the
Indians of Loja as Quina-quina, but that these Indians had no
knowledge of the medicinal property of its bark. We may
admire the taciturn compression of this sentence and must admit
that, for the first of its facts, its author has the unimpeachable
authority of Condamine, who was in Loja in 1737; for the second,
the equally unimpeachable testimony of Humboldt, who was
in Loja in 1799. But we remember that Markham, whose
evidence is as reliable as that of Condamine and that of Humboldt,
has pointed out that in the Quichua Indian tongue reduplicated
names usually indicate the belief that the things so named
possess medicinal properties. The statement as it stands,
therefore, includes two mutually contradictory assertions and
their uncritical combination in one assertive sentence affords a
striking example of neglect by the naturalist to give the attention
they deserve to the methods of the Civil Historian. The atten-
tion of the naturalist has recently been called to this question
by Mr. Ramsbottom, who has furnished evidence that the name
reported by Condamine certainly was applied by the Quichua-
speaking Indians to a tree which they valued because of its
medicinal properties. But it seems probable that the tree to
which the name Quina-quina was primarily applied is the one
which yields the Balsam of Peru; from this the historian is
disposed to conclude that by 1737, when Condamine was in
Loja, Spanish interest in Cinchona had enabled the Quichua-
speaking Indians to supply us with an interesting example of
the well-known phenomenon of name-transfer.
If we see from what has been said how necessary it is to
adopt the methods of Civil History when we wish to learn how
Cinchona came to be used by European apothecaries and
physicians, and how the name it bears arose, we find it just
as necessary to employ these methods if we wish to understand
the development of the commercial activity to which the
discovery gave rise.
The systematic botanist knows that the genus Cinchona
is a very natural one, easily recognised and definitely restricted
in distribution to the rain-forests of the inner Cordilleras, from