• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 16064 0

quinquina tree never grows on plains; it rises straight, and may be seen at a great distance above the tops of other trees about it; for it is never found in groves, but single, and scattered up and down among others of various sorts. If they are permitted to stand, they grow very large, sometimes larger than a man's body. The middle size are eight or nine inches in diameter; but it is now rare to find them of these dimensions upon the mountain. The trees from whence the first bark was taken, which were very large, are all dead, having been entirely stripped, which infallibly kills them when they come to be old. Experience has shown, that stripping kills some of the young ones also, but the greatest part escape. For this operation, they use a common knife, which they hold in both hands; the barker sticks it into the bark as high as he can reach, and so draws it downwards as low as he can. It does not appear that the trees which grow where the old ones stood, have less virtue, the situation and soil being the same. The difference, if there be any, may arise, perhaps, from the different ages of the trees. Few but young ones are now to be met with.

At Loxa, heretofore, they have preferred the coarsest bark, and laid it by as a rarity; but now the finest is most esteemed. The merchants may possibly find their account in it, as it takes less room in packing. Formerly, a director of the English South Sea Company at Panama, through whom all the quinquina that used to go to Europe passed, asserted that the preference given to the fine bark was in consequence of several chemical analyses and experiments which had been made on both sorts in England. It seems probably, that the difficulty of throughly drying the large coarse bard, and the humidity it is naturally apt to contract and retain, contributed to bring it into disrepute. Vulgar prejudice will have it, that to lose nothing of its virtue, the tree should be barked in the moon's decrease, and on the east side. These circumstances, as also its being fathered on the mountain of Cajanuma, were certified by a notary in 1735, when the Marquis de Castelfuerte procured a quantity of quinquina from Loxa, to carry to Spain on his return.

But for the sake of not being idle three-quarters of the year, this prejudice was pretty well got over; and all seasons of the year are found equally proper, provided the weather is dry. The bark, after taking it away, should be exposed to the sun several days together, and for its better preservation, should not be packed till it has lost all its humidity; and this is an essential circumstance. It is not uncommon, for want of this precaution before the packing, to find it mouldy, and then the merchants are apt to lay the fault upon the moon, rather than upon the negligence of those who did not dry it.

The leaves are fixed to a stem about half an inch long; they are smooth, and of a fine green, which is deep on the upper side, and bright beneath. Their outline is even, and of the shape of a lance, being rounded at bottom, and terminating in a point; they are, for the most part, an inch and a half or two inches broad, and two and a half or three inches long.

DESULTORY NOTES ON CATS

Cats were first invented in the garden of Eden. According to the Rabbins, Eve had a pet cat, called Pusey, and from that circumstance arose a sect of cat-worshippers among the Eastern nations, called Puseyites, a sect which, it is said, is still in existence somewhere. When rats began to be troublesome, Adam gave the first pair of cats six lessons in the art of catching them; and since then the knowledge has been retained. The Greeks spelled cat with a k, and the French put an h into it; the pure English scholar will not heed such ignorance, but will keep to the right orthography. In the time of Chaucer, cataract was spelt caterect; but what analogy there is between a cat getting up in the world and water falling down in it, it is difficult to say. The introduction of the cat into cat-aplasm, cat-egory, &c., is unauthorized; it is without the knowledge or consent