The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-01-17 00:00:00

PERUVIAN BA.RK.

It is not an easy matter to interest the public in an essay
' on drugs. but quinine is unforiunately a household word
in every Indian family. Tile price of grain is a question
which seldom gives anxiety to the poorest among us, but
though absolute poverty may be almost unknown, we
are accustomed to look on fever as one of the common in-
cidents of daily life, and the very possibility of a quinine
famine becomes suggestive of a great public calamity. It
has been known for many years that the capacity of the
Peruvian forests for supplying the world with chinchona
bark was not unlimited. Oa the other hand, the demand
for quinine has increased, not only steadily but progres-
sively, in England and elsewhere, as well as in India. The
reputation of the febrifuge grows. It is administered in
scruple doses where it was formerly administered by
grains. It is used largely, as on the late N,ger expedition,
as a prophylactic, where it was formerly used but
sparingly as a remedy for the actual fever. Every
new gold mine discovered in California or Australia, every
new settlement established in Oregon or in New Zealand,
every new lodgment effected by civilisation on the frontiers
of barbarism, acts directly on the quinine market. And
yet the supply from Peru, at the best stationary, is most
probably rapidly diminishing. The naturalisation in
India, therefore, of the quinine yielding ehinehona tree is
a question of philanthropy as well as of agricultural
economy. The best bark is
.found in dry rocky situations,
at great heights, and in the coldest regions. In low and
hot valleys the plant grows—it even grows luxuriantly—
but the medieinai value of its bark vanishes: It is thought
that the conditions thus indicated may be supplied by the
hilts of certain parts of India, such as the mountains
behind Chittagong, the hilly tracts around Darjeeling, the
upper spurs of the Neilgherries, and the higher elevations
of the western Ghauts. In order that the experiment
may he fairly tried, the supreme government has resolved
to move the court of directors to send an experienced
botanist to South America, empowered to select a cargo.
or plants for transport to India. Propagation by seed
has been tried with such ill success that it is considered,
out of the question. All meagre attempts tee
transmit cuttings in small quantities have been found
to be the worst economy. It remains then to follow the
example of the Dutch, who by sending from Batavia for
a shipload of plants, have already attained results which
seem to promise final success. The court of directors can
hardly refuse to listen to the earnest representations which
have been made by the Indian government. The introduc-
tion of the cinchona tree would not only cheapen the most
valuable of all known drugs, and place it within the reach
of a native population which is fever stricken through
half the year, but it would add a new industry to our hill
sides. Slopes unsuited to the growth of tea would grow
chinchona. New modes of culture would thus gradually
encroach on lands which, in spite of their unquestioned
fertility, have hitherto been untitled, because they are not
fit for the growth of cereals. The great problem of the
colonisation of India by Europeans will never be fully
carried out, for the land is but limited on which Europeans
can live and thrive ; but, unless our Indian mountains
were upheaved for nothing, they seem to have been des-,
tined to give support to large colonies of settlers from'.
among that class of Europeans which, while unable to
return to England, is unwilling to live and die in the plains
of India. The class is even now a large one, and it is
increasing from day to day. It numbers already hundreds
of families, and the hundreds will swell to thousands when
room for patient agricultural industry is found in a con-
genial climate.—Friend of Lidia.