MAP
of
PART OF PERU
to illustrate
Mr. C. MARKHAM'S JOURNEY
TO
THE CHINCHONA FORESTS OF
CARAVAYA.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The only valid argument against this change is that it may cause confusion, but the alteration is too slight for this to be possible; and it is not uncommon, among botanists, to correct the usual spelling of genera or species of plants, when it is found to be erroneous. Among other examples of such changes may be enumerated those of Plumeria, now altered to Plumieria; Bufonia to Buffonia; and Gesneria to Gesnera.
[2] See page 490.
[3] In Quichua, when the name of a plant is reduplicated, it almost invariably implies that it possesses some medicinal quality.
[4] La Condamine, Jussieu, and Ruiz all believed that the Indians were aware of the medicinal qualities of Peruvian bark, and that they imparted their knowledge to the Spaniards. Humboldt and Ulloa were of an opposite opinion. The stories of its virtues having been discovered by watching the pumas or South-American lions chewing the bark to cure their fevers, mentioned by Condamine; and of an Indian having found it out by drinking of the waters of a lake into which a chinchona-tree had fallen—told by Geoffroy—are of modern and European origin.
[5] Jussieu says that it is certain that the first knowledge of the efficacy of this bark was derived from the Indians of Malacotas, some leagues south of Loxa.—Weddell, Histoire Naturelle des Quinquinas, p. 15.
[6] Poëppig, Reise.