WCP821

[1]

26 West Park Gardens,

Kew (Surrey).

December 4th 1908.

Dear Dr Wallace,

How extremely kind of you to have this copy of your "Notes of a Botanist on the Amazon & Andes"¹ sent to me from the publishers!

It was so little that I was able to do for you. And that little was willingly rendered.

And now you have [2] sent me a copy of the book — a book which I shall treasure all my life.

What a vast amount of information there is in the book, & how cleverly you have pieced it together. I was quite unaware of Spruce's² correspondence with Daniel Hanbury,³ &c.

The Biographical Introduction is very good.

Page 310 in vol. II [3] has caught my eye. I had always supposed that the Indian Quinine industries took their origin in the Cinchona plants & seeds collected & transferred by Spruce, Cross⁴ & Markham⁵. But I was shocked 2 years ago to hear from the late Mr Charles Baron Clarke⁶ that the Sprucean Cinchona plants though they reached India in safety were all killed off by frost ^{or cold} almost at once through being transported to too high an altitude in the Neilgherries & Darjeeling. [4] I asked Mr Clarke where then the original plants of the Indian plantations came from. And he said they were obtained from the Dutch in Java. I was, as I said above, shocked — painfully shocked to hear this account. And I have always hoped that it was erroneous. I think too that Mr Clarke stated that Cinchona succirubra is not the best quinine-producing species.

I had to accept what Mr Clarke told me. For I knew that he had at one time been placed at the head of the quinine factories in India, & rumour says that by ill-fortune he made some blunder & had to vacate the post. Be that as it may, I still cling to the belief that Spruce's plants were not destroyed, or not all destroyed; & that their offshoots occupy the Indian Cinchona plantations.

With many thanks, yours very truly, | A. Gepp⁷ [signature]