NILGIRI IIILLS. 317 strength of the true Succirubra, and yield bark whose richness in quinine alkaloids approximates to that of the bark of the best varieties of Candoninca. The natural tendency of the Nilgiri cinchonas to produce strong and rich hybrids is the most promising feature of the cultivation. The use of guano, sulphate of ammonia, and farm-yard litter as manure, has resulted in greatly increasing the secretion of alkaloids, particularly in the case of the varieties known as Crown barks, in which the supply in some cases has been doubled. The ordinary process of gathering the bark is by stripping the tree, a process which is thus described by Mr. VIIvor, a former superintendent of the plantations :-* A labourer proceeds to an cight-year-old trec, and, reaching up as far as he can, makes a horizontal incision of the required width. From either end of this incision he runs a vertical incision to the ground, and then, carefully raising with his knife the bark at the horizontal incision until he can seize it with his fingers, he strips off the bark to the ground and cuts it off. The strip of bark then presents the appearance of a ribbon more or less long. Supposing the tree to be of 28 inches in circumference, the labourer takes 9 ribbons, each 1.5 inches wide. . . . As soon as he has removed the strips, he proceeds to moss the trunk all round, tying on the moss with some fibre. The decorticated intervals are thus excluded from light and air. This exclusion of light and air from a stem partially bared of bark, acts in two ways-(1) it enables a healing process to be rapidly set up ...; and (2) it increases the secretion of quinine in the bark renewed under its protection. ... At the end of six or twelve months the bands of bark left untouched at the first stripping are removed, and the intervals they occupied on the trunk are mossed. At the end of 22 months, on an average, the spaces occupied by the ribbons originally taken are found to be covered with renewed bark much thicker than the natural bark of the same age; and this renewed hark can be removed and a fresh process of renewal again fostered by moss. In another six or twelve months, the renewed bark of the natural ribbons left at the first stripping can be taken, and so on. Harvests are obtainable from the trunk, alternately from the spaces left at the first stripping and the spaces left by the second stripping Experience does not show any limit to the taking of these harvests from a tree. Of course it is understood that at every stripping the ribbons taken are longer than a preceding stripping, because the tree each year increases in height and bulk, and therefore the top of every ribbon consists of natural bark and the lower part of renewed bark.' Another method of collecting the bark is that recently introduced by the Dutch in Java, namely by scraping or shaving off the outer layers of the bark, leaving the inner layer to protect the cambiumn. The alleged advantages of this system are said to be—(1) that it involves the
