112
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
the satisfaction, when he described the tree which yields "red
bark," of giving it the name Cinchona succirubra. This discovery
removed the temptation to export a spurious "red bark": one
of the first results of the declaration of war by Spain against
England in June, 1779, was the capture, off Lisbon, of a Spanish
ship from Lima with a cargo of "red bark." This particular
kind of bark, hitherto unknown to English apothecaries and
physicians, met with such favour in London that it was at once
regarded as officinal; it still remains the only kind of Cinchona
bark whose use is permitted by the British Pharmacopaeia.
If, prior to 1682, what France knew regarding Cinchona was
derived from English sources, by 1779 French knowledge had
become more extensive than that current in England. Raynal,
in an account published in 1780, was able to say that in France
pharmacy knew and used, besides the original quina-quina
described by Condamine from Loja, a "white quina-quina"
from the forests in the valley of the Maranon which drains the
district of Jaen to the south of Loja : moreover, French importers
handled not only the "red quina-quina" which had reached
England for the first time in 1779, but also a "yellow quina-
quina," though they imagined that both came, like the original
"pale quina-quina," from the district of Loja.
It is understood that Raynal's "white quina-quina" from
Jaen was a Cascarilla, not a Cinchona; though we know now
that one Cinchona, named in compliment to Humboldt, does
occur in Jaen, it happens to be one whose bark is not sufficiently
medicinal to be worth exploiting. It is not surprising that
Raynal's contemporaries should have thought that "red bark"
was a product of Loja, seeing that it was shipped from Lima:
why the Spaniards should have concealed from French importers
the provenance of "yellow bark" is not at all clear.
Even as late as 1834 not much more was known in England
than Raynal knew in France in 1780: "Peruvian" or "Jesuits'"
bark was of three kinds, known to commerce as the "pale bark"
of Loja, by that time very scarce; the "red bark" which
reached London first in 1779, and was now known to come from
the Andes of Ecuador, though it was not till 1845 that Europe
learned that the only district in which it was exploited was in
the rain forests on the slopes of Chimborazo; lastly, the "yellow
bark," which seems to have reached England first about 1790,