edge of which is interesting if not absolutely necessary to success in the operation. A scientific knowledge of physiology and hygiene also has its best examplification in the daily care of a household. Thus the commonest duties of the family will only illustrate most faithfully and fully the principles of science learned in schools, and education is made complete and symmetrical by the simultaneous culture and expansion of all the powers and functions of mind and body.

The incident of wealth, however great, constitutes no exemption from the necessity of a thorough domestic education. Perhaps the most formidable object of solicitude to the young housekeeper at the present day is that of domestic labor. A foolish prejudice has sprung up in the minds of American girls dependent on their labor for support, against household service, which they refuse on any terms, and accept routine labor in some species of manufacture, requiring long daily service, constrained or cramped positions, insufficient ventilation, and an expense for board that leaves a remainder too small to pay for the losses incurred, in comparison with wholesome, comfortable, well-paid housework. Thousands of girls are yearly killing themselves in large cities by overwork and insufficient pay, especially in the various departments of sewing. In manufacturing towns they are better paid, though often they are injuring health that would have been improved by household labor.

The evil is one of such magnitude as to attract the attention and command the anxious consideration of the most practical minds with a view to a possible remedy. Many a family has actually and seriously suffered by the deprivation of help, often in cases of long continued sickness, until kind-hearted neighbors have voluntarily neglected their own families, or friends have come from many miles distance, to render aid which money failed to purchase. Persons with abundant means to pay for service have been compelled to overtask themselves, even at the risk of life, in household labors and care of the sick which no one could be found to share. In the eastern States this difficulty has been at its maximum of late, and nearly the same state of facts exists at the west. Every expedient is adopted for partial relief; temporary help of the most nondescript character is accepted, and changes are of weekly occurrence, sometimes with intervals of days unblest with any assistance whatever. What is a young housekeeper to do if ignorant of domestic affairs in such an emergency? Her husband may, as a last resort, if in a city, seek refuge in a hotel or restaurant, but the young bride is in danger of starvation.

Fortunately there are few daughters of farmers whose domestic education is thus neglected. They may not realize, however, the full importance of a thorough knowledge of the widest range of domestic economy as practiced on the farm or elsewhere. They may be wives of farmers, of artisans, merchants, or professional men, and should be prepared for any station they may be called to occupy, though they cannot find one more honorable than that from which they spring There is abundant room for progress in this branch of education, in the country as well as in the city. A tour through the land will reveal, in houses of all ranks of society, cookery which is the fruitful source of dyspepsia and its frightful train of ills. In the houses of many farmers, particularly in the west and south, where abundance is always present, however coarse the quality, how often are tough meats floated in grease and fried to the pliancy and color of leather, and served with biscuits like bullets, and of nearly equal destructiveness. Such viands are even more prejudicial to health than the gout-producing delicacies of the gourmand as they come from the skillful hand of his French cook. "While the Lord sends meats" almost with the profusion of the quails that fed the Israelites, it must be that "the devil sends cooks." The evil should be remedied. The faculty of any female college in the land is incomplete without some Professor Blot.

If the Arabs permitted divorce for ignorance of bread-making, their laws were

less inimical to good morals than are those of Indiana. A woman is a broken reed, who cannot, in the time of need-which is emphatically the hour of servant-girl absenteeism-produce the staff of life. Few kitchen girls can bake a loaf of bread of the first quality; many are able to make only the most wretched failures. It would not be extravagant to say that bad bread had destroyed more life than gunpowder-certainly produced more suffering. Whatever a woman's accomplishment or fortune, she cannot be certain of having wholesome food for her family unless she can, at least, teach practically the high art of bread-making. It is a prime essential in a young woman's education, for the lack of which no culture in other directions can compensate.

Many of those who have neglected this education in youth will be compelled to acquire it under circumstances the most disagreeable and inopportune, as in the case of a friend of a well-known American authoress, (Mrs. Sigourney,) who encountered a disheartening and mortifying experience in the west, but persevering, surmounted all obstacles, and became as accomplished in domestic affairs as in the learning of the schools. The following is a brief extract from her interesting description of her suffering, her conflict, and her victory:

"Household work cannot, as some imagine, be done extempore, nor is there a royal road to domestic economy any more than to any other art or science. I applied my strength, my mind, and my conscience to the business. I often failed, but I learned from failure as well as from success. Practice made that easy which at first seemed impossible. I can now dispatch a bit of work in the time I at first consumed in sighing over it, and I often find my hands are performing their work like machinery, while my mind is wandering over earth, sea, and skies. What a wonder-worker is habit! When we cannot obtain domestics, we do not now suffer. Such occasions are, however, rare. We can get rough Irish or Germans, and I know how to direct them, what to require of them, and where to assist them. They are well called 'hands;' their employer must be 'head' to them. And now, my dear friend, those branches of my education which, in my first despair, I thought utterly lost upon me, have assumed their right position, and household drudgery takes its subordinate place. I now feel the full value of my late domestic education, which enables me to enjoy with a quiet conscience, the elegant pursuits for which my early instruction alone qualified me."

*

CULTIVATION OF THE CINCHONA IN THE UNITED STATES.

BY THOMAS ANTISELL, M. D., DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

THE object of the present article is to call the attention of agriculturists and others to the necessity for and advantage of cultivation in the United States of that genus of trees which yields Peruvian bark and quinine; and, in so doing, to give an outline of the natural history and chemistry of that family, to detail the steps which have been taken by other nations in the effort to obtain within their national limits a sufficient supply of that drug so necessary to all inhabitants of southern, temperate, and intertropical latitudes, and to demonstrate the imperative necessity on the part of the government of the United States of decided, active, and prompt measures to establish cinchona plantations within the domain of this great republic.

No apology is needed for pressing this subject upon national attention. There is no matter more becoming a free and peace loving people than the extension of the cultivation of products not hitherto found within our confines, n or any occupation which will conduce more to multiplication of life comforts and national riches.

It might at first sight appear but a small matter whether a sufficient supply of a certain vegetable product, and that an article of the materia medica, can be supplied in the regular course of commerce; but when it is considered as an admitted fact that its produce is yearly diminishing, the demand for its use yearly increasing, and that no medicinal substance has yet been found which can in any degree be a substitute for its action or supplement its virtue, it must be confessed that that government would fail in its chief function, and cease to merit the support of the governed, which would neglect to act in a case where the health of the whole community is so seriously interested.

Quinine and Peruvian bark are used for many more diseases than formerly, and have taken the place of many other remedies, such as the black pepper of the ancient Romans, the willow bark, the piperine, and the web of the black spider among modern people. Quinine is valuable, not merely for the cure of disease, although as a curative agent there is none which is so steadily advancing in medical favor, and whose application in treatment of all diseases, marked by debility arising from an ill-conditioned blood, is becoming so extended that there are few maladies in which its exhibition is not appropriate in some stage or another, but also for its prophylactic or protecting power against the approaches of disease from malaria. In brief, it preserves the health in the midst of an unhealthy soil and atmosphere. Its value as a means of warding off the attacks of intermittent fever is now so appreciated that the English admiralty have issued regulations for naval vessels off the coast of Africa, requiring that every man shall take quinine when the ship is within a certain distance of the east and west coasts of Africa, and that it shall be regularly continued in eight-grain doses every morning by those engaged in boat cruising along the coasts of the rivers and creeks of that continent. During the late war in this country the practice of administering quinine as a prophylactic was carried out on a large scale, having been commenced in the McClellan campaign on the peninsula, and continued afterwards to the manifest benefit of the health of both officers and men when administered in whiskey in the early morning with or without coffee. Under its influence thousands of men have been safely quartered on James island, opposite Charleston, during the malarial season, where formerly it was considered certain death to sleep out in the air for a single night.

The cinchona genus belongs to a natural order of plants, the rubiacea of Jussieu, which has already given to man coffee, ipecacuanha, and madder. The true cinchona trees flourish from 10° north latitude to 18° south of the equator, in South America, at an average elevation of 6,400 feet above sea level; the fine barks are found between 7° north and 15° south, and range from the height mentioned to 11,000 feet of elevation; below six thousand feet cinchonas rarely descend; the ladenbergia, an allied genus, descends to nearly 4,000 feet of elevation; and another allied genus, the exostemma, descends even to the sea level.

The native habitat of the genus is in the mountain region of South America, a vast tract of country extending for hundreds of leagues eastward from the Peruvian Andes to the confines of Brazil, and consisting of vast impenetrable forests whose silence has never been disturbed by the civilized explorer, and where savage inhabitants are so unfriendly as to repel all the advances of civilization. The tribe called Chunchos, living on the headwaters of the Purus, have either murdered or driven away all the settlers, so that in the rich valleys of Paucartambo not a single settler remains since 1861, and the rich Spanish farms scattered everywhere around have been swallowed up by the advancing tropical forests which grow with amazing rapidity. These forests consist of huge trees, some having beautiful wood, some valuable gums and resins, and others consti

tuting fine timber; a rank undergrowth or jungle covers the whole country, and the stems of the trees are interlaced and woven together by festoons of creeping, closely matted parasites. Besides the bark tree, here is found the India-rubber, vanilla, copal, cinnamon, balsam, indigo, copaiba, ipecacuanha, sarsaparilla, vegetable wax, coffee, and cotton, and a host of other valuable species.

It is remarkable that the cinchona genus occupies so small a space of the forest world; as far as known, it does not occur in nature in equatorial Asia or Africa. On this continent it extends no further than the limits above stated, and has not yet been found in North America. Within the range of over 1,800 miles the species never descends nearer to the sea level than an altitude of 2,500 feet, and thence reach up the mountain sides for several thousand feet of altitude; above this high limit are low alpine shrubs, and below the lower limit are forests of bamboo and palms. Within the zone occupied by the cinchonas are the tree passion flowers, melastomaceæ and arborescent ferns. That they may with advantage be cultivated in other localities has been long the opinion of those naturalists who have visited the native forests where they abound.

Humboldt has pointed out, outside of the geographical limits stated, other regions of South America which possess suitable conditions of climate for the growth of these trees as the Silla de Caraccas, and a few mountain ranges of Cumana, also some portions of Mexico; and he suggested that the low tracts of land which intervened between the lofty mountains of Cumana and the region of the Andes, and between Cumana and Mexico, have prevented the cinchona species from crossing over and spreading northward.

In good soil and favoring climate they become large forest trees; when crowded and on rocky ground they become thin, tall, and without branches below, and when at the upper limit of climate they dwindle into shrubs; the leaves are long, uniform in shape, generally lanceolate, with a shining, bright green surface, traversed by crimson veins, and petioles of the same color. The flowers are very small, hanging in clustering panicles like lilacs, of a deep roseate hue, pale at the stalk, and dark crimson within the tube, with white curly hairs bordering the lacinia of the corolla, (Markham.)

The various species of the genus do not appear to mix, but preserve their localities in respect to elevation and latitude quite distinct. Taking them in order, the cinchona calisaya has been found furthest south in Bolivia and Caravaya up to 12° south latitude; thence for 2° north no valuable species have been found; then comes the Huanaco region, in northern Peru, in which the gray barks are to be found; further north is the Loxa region, in which the brown barks predominate; the Chimborazo region succeeds, in which the red bark species abound; and lastly, most northerly is the New Granada region, containing chiefly the cinchona lancifolia. Thus there are five distinct regions, in which as many different species occur.

Mr. Howard believes that every well-defined region of the Andes has its own prevalent and characteristic cinchona which is not capable of being reduced to any one typical form, and that no species has been clearly proved to prevail unchanged from end to end of the cinchonaceous region, so that the forms which resemble each other in distant parts will be found analogous rather than identical. In these native forests the species are becoming scarce, and owing to the cupidity of the bark hunters and the neglect of the proprietors, the cinchonas are fast disappearing. No effort is made to replace the trees which have been felled, and in the act of cutting down no thought is taken to allow of space in trunk for young shoots to spring from. Mr. Buckalew, now United States senator, formerly minister resident at Ecuador, (1858-61,) writes that the trees of cinchona succirubra are getting scarce before the depredations of the cascarilleros or bark hunters. "There is not one tree," he writes, "probably in cultivation or domesticated in the republic of Ecuador, and it is not found elsewhere."

Don N. Lorenzano, the owner of extensive cinchona forests near Bogota, states,

however, that the indiscriminate cutting of trees mentioned by travellers occurs only in the forests of Pitayo; that the usual plan which he and others follow is, to leave about three feet of trunk above ground unstripped, whence shoots arise, and then clearing the ground so as to admit the light and sun, and thus allow the seeds of valuable varieties to germinate freely, and that by this means, in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and New Granada, a fixed plan of cutting is preserved. This, however, is doing very little to propagate a genus whose number is at present so insufficient that England alone cannot obtain from Peru a sufficient supply of bark to manufacture quinine from.

The process of removing the bark is thus described by Pereira, whose remarks are abridged here: The name of cascarilleros is given not only to the men who bark the trees in the woods, but also to those who are in any way specially engaged in this commerce. The bark is chiefly gathered during the dry season, and the operation is commenced by sending in front an experienced (practicos) man of the cascarilleros to prospect the country, and determine the locality where the trees abound in greatest number, for the cinchonas rarely constitute an entire forest, but grow in more or less compact groups called manchas; occasionally only one tree grows here and there sporadically. It is on this latter account that much skill and experience is shown by the cascarilleros in separating out of the dense mass of foliage which such forests display, the few cinchonas which may be scattered through it. The inspection of the trunk, the aspect of the foliage, the form of the tops of the trees, and the peculiar character which the inflorescence communicates to the cinchona, all serve to the anxious Indian as so many guides in his weary search for these desirable trees. When selected the whole tree is generally felled a little above the roots, which are then cleared of earth, and the bark of the roots removed so long as any thick bark is yielded from the root. The bark of the stem is then beaten with wooden mauls or hatchets until the peridium or outer bark is loosed. The inner bark of the stem and branches, after being freed from the outer bark, is placed over a gentle fire, and dried for a few weeks, by which operation it loses about two-thirds of its original weight.

The bark of the branches only is selected in northern Peru and Ecuador, while in southern Peru and Bolivia it is taken from the stem and branches. In the warmer seasons the drying is effected by simple exposure to the sun. Pasteur thinks this process by the sun diminishes the quantity of alkaloid obtained. The collection of bark takes place in New Granada in all seasons of the year, owing to the cupidity of the cascarilleros; in Peru and Bolivia it is, as stated, gathered only in the dry season.

There are many trees and shrubs allied to the genus cinchona which have been mistaken for the true plant, and have been sought after and the bark collected instead of the cinchona proper. Thus the brown barks of Loxa, which at one time bore a high value, have become almost a rejected sample in the market, owing to the adulteration and substitution practiced before it left the South American port. The bark of many of the species ladenbergia is collected and palmed off as cinchona. Shortly after Linnæus established the genus cinchona, Endlicher divided it into two sub-genera, one of which he named quinquina, (from the Indian word quina, which, in Quichoa language, signifies a "bark," the doubling of the words implies its excellency or its medicinal use,) in which the dehiscence of the ripe capsules is from below upwards; the other, cascarilla, in which the dehiscence of the fruit is from above downwards. Weddell subsequently raised them into the two genera cinchona and calisaya, and most writers prefer to follow him. The distinction would appear trivial were it not that the proper cinchona alkaloids have hitherto been exclusively found in the species of the first section or genus, and which therefore are the only genuine cinchona plants. The modes of classification of the genus have led to much confusion. In the beginning it was deemed sufficient to distinguish the few varying kinds of the cinchonide by the prevalent form of the leaf, as cordifolia, lancifolia, oblongifolia,